He: "Who or what is your idea of god?"
Me: "At one time I could speak confidently that I KNEW within a moral certainty exactly who god was, his Name and his purpose. Now, I have to laugh at my idiotic and egotistical self-deception! Any god that I--a mortal creature--could describe and know would always be unworthy of worship and far removed from reality. You know why? Because such a god would be more ME and my imagination. I'm ignorant. I don't and can't KNOW god. Anybody who tells me that they DO is somebody I view with caution. The way you'd treat a person who has been kidnapped and probed by aliens in a UFO."
He: "For a guy with no beliefs you have very strong beliefs!"
Me: "You and I don't use language the same way, I'm afraid. It makes accuracy of communication almost impossible."
He: "Why do you say that?"
Me: "Because I live in a Post-Enlightenment world described by science with measurements and descriptions that are testable. You, as a Seminary student, are immersed in a Pre-Enlightenment world described by metaphor utterly elusive to testing except as an interpretation of an emotion."
He: "So you are alone in the Universe without direction, then. Doesn't that frighten you?"
Me: " I came through my mother's birth canal without a roadmap or a clue. Same as you, I suspect. On the one hand, Science had given us medicine, technology, space travel, triple-bypass surgery and antibiotics while religion has given us talking snakes and donkeys, fluttering angels and malevolent devils. Which is closer to reality and progress and health and well-being?"
He: "But, we all die."
Me: "Well said! The religious person does die. No better or worse than the infidel."
He: "But, afterward the judgment!"
Me: "Afterward, the funeral! Remember Jason, Muslims have the 42 virgins and Mormons have their own planet and Jehovah's Witnesses have a Paradise Earth according to belief--not according to reality. We can test a dead body for life. We can't test a belief; we can only assert it."
He: "We have the promises of the bible."
Me: "And the Koran and the Vedas, and the returning...returning...almost here....Jesus as well. I once had a friend who promised to split his Lottery winnings with me! You'll notice I did not drive up in a limousine!"
He: "Those Jehovah Witnesses really did a number on you, didn't they?"
Me: "I was the one who jumped in to the frying pan. I did it to myself."
He: "Why?"
Me: "Because I was a believer before I was a skeptic who tests belief. I was a person of Faith rather than a person of due diligence. I wanted pie in the sky bye and bye rather than a life of three score and ten and then a cemetery plot. It is called gullibility and greed for more than there really is. I was a glutton who could stuff a tasty promise in my gut and ask for whipped cream!"
He: "I've never heard anything like this before. You're a strange man. I don't mean to be insulting."
Me: "I'm non-threatening and have no agenda to carry out. I won't be spreading any false doctrines to young college students or instructing others to put whim and willy-nilly ahead of a reasonable skeptical inquiry, that's for sure."
He: "And how do you know for sure if you are right or not?"
Me: "The easiest test there is. I look at my own life. We need to be able to spot a phony even if he is staring back at us from our mirror! When I was a bible thumping, door knocking Jehovah's Witness I never improved anybody's life for even five minutes. I just parroted what I was told. It was a job like cleaning the bathroom. I was so busy wallowing in all that "Truth" I forgot to be real. Telling somebody something that isn't true---even if it is beautiful--is a terrible and cruel attempt at making the world a better place. I'd rather mind my own business when it comes to certainty and absolutes."
He: "Well....food for thought. I enjoyed talking with you. I have to go now."