I had an older fellow come to my door this morning handing out information about his church. In my younger days I would have either answered and simply said “no thanks” or not answered at all. I have recently changed my policy on saying nothing since I feel it’s important to try and reduce the obvious bigotry towards atheism in the United States. So I opened the door and the fellow greeted me. He was very kind and asked why we were moving from our beautiful home (we have a for sale sign out front). I assured him that we were planning on moving into an equally beautiful home here in the Tri-Cities. He then started into his pitch, pulling out a flyer stating “we welcome you to accept God...” when I interjected “no thanks, we’re atheist.”

This seemed to startle him and he struggled to hide his shock. He replied “we are, are we... don’t believe in God?” to which I replied “nope!” I could see the genuine interest he had in this seemingly well adjusted heathen standing before him and he continued “have you been this way your whole life?” This is a pretty standard response I get and one that makes sense to ask. “Well, we are all atheists at birth” I replied. “My parents were loosely affiliated with religious groups from time to time and so of course there was some level of indoctrination. But during my progression to adulthood I gained invaluable education and the more rationality I applied to religion, the less it made sense. Using common sense, rationality and logic I was able to comfortably reach a decision that ‘arguments from ignorance’ are futile and so I have chosen to ignore them. These arguments include everything impractical (not just religion) but also fairies, Bigfoot etc.”.

He pressed on with a puzzled look “you say you came to this conclusion through education? I guess I did as well, I learned about evolution in school, but it didn’t make sense because it was God that created everything, I mean, it says so right in the Bible.” I love dealing with this line of thinking so I replied “the only legacy the Bible has left us is that we can confidently ignore almost everything written in it. You would be hard pressed to find a more wicked, cruel, sexist and racist piece of literature in any culture. I feel like a better person deliberately not following anything in the Bible.” Nodding in agreement he said “it’s true that the old testament was brutal, but the old testament is just a historical chronicle of the times, it’s in the new testament and through the teachings of Jesus Christ that makes us better people, we follow these writings.” Again, it seems that many Christians take liberty in filtering out things in the Bible (old and new testament) that don’t agree with their moral sense (and that being the case, what is the purpose of religion at all because we could then simply come up with our own set of rules). At that point I could have quoted the New Testament:

“Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior. … Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one look down on you. Titus 2:9-10,15 (NRSV) ** revised; this quote replaced (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB), thanks to Grant for spotting the error **

Charming, isn’t it? Instead I chose to talk about what Jesus claimed. I said “the problem with Jesus is that you can’t consider his teachings if you value honesty. Jesus made claims that we know today were absolutely not true and the same for claims made about Jesus. The story about rising from the dead is a claim about biology, which we know is impossible. The claim of walking on water is a claim of physics, which we also know to be impossible. One of the most important qualities of thinkers today is intellectual honesty about what we can and cannot claim to know through the evidence we have currently collected. I think it’s important to avoid the ‘God of the Gaps’ and pretend to ‘know’ answers in the way that religion does. Believing creationism over evolution and filling in scientific blanks with an omnipotent personality doesn’t answer anything, because you then have to ask “what made the creator?”

Again nodding in agreement he said “yes, yes, there is that question of course, but I guess faith gives me comfort. Knowing where I’ll be going after death is very comforting...” This one is still a puzzler for me, so I offered my perspective “one of the driving forces in my younger years to dispel religion was the creepiness and fear related to a wicked and cruel creator judging everything I did. Holding a life time in the most severe torment imaginable over my head, it’s very disturbing and I feel great about not having to deal with that.”

His only comment further was to say that he did in fact find comfort and that he was glad we had talked. I agreed, shook his hand and wished him a good day. He then turned and walked to the next door. I guess I hope that maybe a bug was planted in his ear, dogma is a powerful curse on us and there is no doubt this fellow has suffered a life-long, paralyzing imprisonment under its crushing weight. It was clear he had thought about some of the points I brought up, but was forced to stymy his reason out of fear of eternal punishment. What a difficult position to be in.