Water Melons

So, here's what happened. A few nights ago, Melinda and I decided to run over to Wally fer something. My friend Jordan works night shift there as a stocker. Turned out his break was in a few minutes and he said he'd meet us outside to have a smoke. When he came out two other guys came too, one another stocker I guess and one was a black guy named Brain who was a security guard, I assume also employed by Wally. Jordan is my only "friend friend" that I have known from my life before...even before I met Melinda. He says he used to be an atheist and now considers himself a born-again Christian. You have to know that I consider Jordan a genuine friend, in fact one of the best friends I ever had. We have each helped the other out over the years in many ways, including financially, when one had and the other did not. We've seen each other through girlfriends and marriages, deep depressions and good times. In fact we met, maybe strangely, when I was doing the newsletter for the Alabama Freethought Association (AFA) at Lake Hypatia, and later I had my own little publication I called SOAR. Apparently at some point he was a member of a freethought group.

Jordan doesn't do online hardly at all, but writes and talks a good deal about religion, etc. He's not much on "church Christians", has his own ideas about the religion, and is one of those folk who, for some reason, accept "the resurrection" as evidence for the existence of God. Go figger. Ordinarily I would never engage in any conversation in the "real world" about religion with total strangers. On this morning though, when these fellers came out to the parking lot to take their break with Jordan, he introduced me to them as his best friend Temy with whom he had some online debates about religion. The young feller didn't say anything as I recall, just listened a bit and then kinda vanished. Brian asked, "You don't believe in God!?", as though he had never met such a monstrocity in person before...probably hadn't.

I considered for a moment simply leaving but Jordan was there and I felt compelled to see this through, though I knew immediately this was not going to end well. There are people on both sides of "the debate" about whether a god exists who genuinely enjoy the argument in an intellectual kind of way. There are others who instantly think one who is not on "their side" is simply crazy; the atheists of this sort often resort to calling such folk various names like morons, at least online, though I wonder how many would do so face to face, especially if such a person were a genuine friend. Some of the believers of this sort are restrained only by social factors from physically attacking an unbeliever, like some people would attack a gay man for being stupid enough to be gay. I might be wrong, but I got the distinct impression that Brian is in this category.

Brian set out to show me how silly it was to not believe in God by invoking water melons. "Water melons are food, right?", he asks, and when I assent, he explains how ridiculous it would be for there to be food if there were no one to eat it. Therefore God created water melons for us to eat. I'm not kidding. I asserted there were other possible reasons for the existence of water melons, such as to produce more water melons, and I had a flash of him pointing to seedless melons, but he didn't. The back and forth continued for a bit and Brian finally asserts that "...every knee will bow to the name of Jesus at Judgment Day", and by then I could see it was beyond futile, talking to this man about this subject; I also got the sense that Brain would love to be one of the enforcers making every knee bow. I was getting a bit perturbed and informed him that even if there were such a thing as Judgment Day, my knees do not bow, even for a cop with his pistol aimed at my head screaming for me to "get on the ground" and both Melinda nodded and mentioned how they knew this was fact because Melinda was there at the time, and Jordan found a bondsman to get me out of jail.

Luckily, break time finally was ending and I got to my feet from where I had been sitting on the curb beside Jordan. I extended my hand to Brain and he shook my hand and I said, "You have a good night", even though it was actually about 5:15 in the morning by now. I expected maybe a "You too", from Brain, but he said, "Now see, I can't even wish him a good night", apparently talking to Jordan. He went on to say something about Christians not associating with unbelievers because that means you support them....something to that effect. I looked back at him and said, "Man, that just doesn't make any sense at all", and continued on to get on the car to come home. I last saw them heading back into the store.

I got a call from Jordan a day or so later and he was telling me how he had told Brian that I had kicked his ass in that little debate. Jordan, of course, agrees with Brian that God exists, but thinks I won the debate. Jordan has even written a small booklet for Christians on how NOT to debate an atheist...maybe I'll include that here sometime.

It was a bit like hearing callers who call in to The Atheist Experience podcast. I can't bear to listen to or watch hardly any show at all about anything which takes calls from the public. My level of embarrassment just goes off the charts at hearing most representatives of the masses. I would never call in myself, for the same reason.

I do like water melons, but sheesh!

TRB