New Hobby: get high and talk about Jesus
My Person and I were out for a walk last night, and we found some evangelicals handing out tracts on a street corner. We then proceeded to have a 2.5 hour conversation with them*. And, guys, it was a good conversation, and SO MUCH FUN.
(Sorry, IDK how to make Read More happen anymore.)
I guess this is where I’ve ended up, instead of having an angry atheist phase. Lots and lots of people, when they first get out of religion go through a phase where they’re really angry because they find out they’ve been lied to their entire life (about the existence of God(s), and which are the right one(s)). And most of these ppl calm down after a bit, feeling less of a need to lash out at believers. Religion/relationship with God(s) is a really deep part of our integrity, so the anger and hurt is understandable; when you think someone’s worldview is completely shifted, it makes sense they’d have strong emotions about that. I skipped this phase mostly by taking over ten years to deconvert completely (Christian-->Pagan-->atheist).
But now, I do find myself with a desire to...spread doubt. I guess, I’ve decided for myself that believing true things is the most important to living my best life, and consequently, I want the ppl around me to also believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible. I’m not out to deconvert ppl, or turn them atheist. But from my, now outsider, perspective, most theists have not really questioned or examined their beliefs and assumptions**. In fact, there are many religions and sects that actively discourage examination of beliefs, or skepticism. And this can be harmful, because beliefs inform actions. It’s like, ‘here, I found this new, shiny, important thing, let me show it to as many ppl as possible’. And that ‘new, shiny, important thing’ in this case is that doubts aren’t bad, and ‘I don’t know’ is a good answer because it leaves room to find out. So like, I skipped being an angry atheist, and went instead to ‘atheist enthusist’. XD
It’s interesting because as a theist, I found other religions interesting, and fun to learn about as an academic exercise. But as an atheist, I’ve become much more interested in talking to people about why and how they believe what they do. My Person, who’s been an atheist since highschool, has loved these conversations about belief since he was young, and I didn’t really get it before. But I do now. And there were SO MANY THINGS I wanted to talk about.
Me and my evangelist kind of went all over the place because there’s so much to cover. There’s whether God exists (I can’t say He doesn’t, but I’m not convinced He does)***, and whether the physical universe is evidently designed (which he insisted it was, but I’m fair convinced it wasn’t. Oh, and evolution by natural selection ISN’T FUCKING RANDOM). Then there’s the question of whether God, if we assume for the sake of argument that He exists, is worthy of worship. If I had sufficient evidence for the existence of God(s), I would believe at once, but that doesn’t mean I’d join that God’s religion, and start worshiping them. If one reads the Bible from beginning to end, God is not a moral actor. He’s kind of a dick, honestly, causing or inciting genocide, giving instructions on how you can beat your slaves instead of putting ‘don’t own someone else as property’ into His ten commandments, that time he caused a bear to slaughter a bunch of children because they made fun of one of the prophets for being bald (was it Ezekiel?), &c. And that’s just selecting from the first half of the Bible.
We even veered off into conspiracy territory at a couple points. New York doctors are murdering babies (not aborting fetuses, but killing actual babies), apparently, and the UN is evil, a tool of Satan, and part of the end of days. That one super threw me for a loop, though it’s not really surprising, given that he believed the Bible is literally true (young earth, and all). The thing about the UN came up in the conversation before the point where he affirmed that the Bible was 100% true, so it caught me off guard. Interestingly enough, when we talked about things like evolution, he did not insist that everything had to be 6,000 years old, so I wonder if he might be less of a young earth creationist than he was willing to admit.
Probably the biggest topic, and the thing we kept coming back to, was faith. Faith was, to this guy, his reason for believing. He claimed to have evidence of the Bible’s veracity (hence, my homework, although he also tried suggesting Lee Strobel, and Ken Ham, lolno). Because my main point of contention with him, and well, believers in general, is that point about truth, and wanting to believe true things. Faith, and personal experiences are not good ways to find out if something is true. Faith can get you to Jesus, but it can also get you to Allah, Vishnu, Buddha, space aliens, &c&c&c. And if something can get you true conclusions, but also false conclusions, it is not a good tool for determining truth. But, oh, his faith in Jesus is different from the Muslim’s or Hindu’s faith because it came from God, neverminding that the hypothetical Muslim or Hindu would make the same claim, and have the same surety that they were the ones who had the truth.
Also also, he weasel-worded ‘faith’ SO HARD. You see, there are two definitions of ‘faith’, one is trust. I have faith that if I drop something it will fall. I trust that the object will fall. Why? Because every other time I’ve dropped something, it fell. I have trust based on the evidence of my previous observations of how objects react to being dropped. But then there’s the Hebrews 11:1 definition of ‘faith’: “assurance of things hoped for, evidence of things unseen”. And by that definition, I DON’T have faith. And this guy would use both definitions interchangeably, and then, when I would agree to having faith by the first definition, insist that I therefore, have faith by the second definition, and I would repeatedly have to correct him. I don’t have faith in evolution the same way he has faith in Jesus. We have actual EVIDENCE that the Earth is old as fuck, and that evolution actually happened, not FAITH.
Yeah, probably no-one actually cares about my conversations with random street corner evangelists, Lulz, and I probably really need to change the name of this blog, because I’m not particularly Pagany or witchy any more. But I had so much fun, and I’m just like, that excited kid who just got a new toy and has to show everyone, because it’s so cool. Except my new toy is conversations with evangelicals. XD Also, you know, epistemology is important, and I want people to use good tools to figure out if things are true, not bad ones.
* I also happened to be high when we started this conversation (though the weed had worn off by the end of it). This part is pretty unrelated, but it makes a Hell of an amusing post title.
** I suspect this is likely less true of Paganisms, only because so many Pagans convert from other beliefs, or shift beliefs in their journey, allowing them to be more open to admitting that they have held incorrect beliefs before, and changing them.
*** To be clear, the definition of ‘atheist’ that I use is that it answers the question of ‘do you believe in God(s)?’ with ‘no’. I am not saying that God(s) 100% do not exist, because that would be a claim to knowledge, and frankly, I do not know that 100% God(s) do not exist. It seems, at this point, very unlikely, but I do not know it as fact. So when I say I’m an atheist, I am not saying, ‘there is no way your God(s) actually exist’, I am saying, ‘I have not yet been presented with sufficient evidence to conclude that your God(s) exist, and I am going to withhold belief in said God(s) until I AM presented with that evidence’.