Friday, June 29, 2007
Jehovah's Witnesses: Quite Easily Defeated
Read enough of my words, and you can figure out my beliefs or lack-there-of pretty easily. I'm an atheist, and yes, a very proud one. I'm not one of those losers who takes pride or finds automatic comradery in his race, nationality, gender, blood type, voice frequency, or other such grouping classifications. People have little to no choice in such matters. I despise clan mentalities, I'm allergic to such nonsense, makes me want to vomit until I turn inside out. That said, the one classification that I do take pride in is my set of beliefs. Why? Because I chose them, or at least rationalized why I should believe them to the best that I can. If the nonsense that is religion was never made into what it is, I wouldn't have to be proud of being an atheist, but so is not the case.
So since religion is such a threat, and since people abuse it as some sort of "get out of jail free/can't touch me" card, I believe it's relevant to be adamant in spouting why it's bullshit.
I use whatever opportunity I can to do so, not so much in peppering everything I say with blatantly didactic rhetoric as I just did, though. I hate reading such things when it's not what I'm looking for, so I'll show the two people who visit this nonmagical realm the same mercy.
Now, this dates back to April, it was around the time that I read The God Delusion and was feasting on as much atheistic material as I could, and also feeling philosophical because I had an upcoming philosophy exam. So I was sitting in a room studying for an exam when I heard someone pounding away at my door. I thought at first it was another passerby who was unfortunate enough to fall into my cache of hidden bear traps and broken bottles, too wounded and disoriented to ring the doorbell like a decent human being. But nope, I saw two short silhouettes through the glass of the door.
"Trolls have come to eat my unborn-never-to-be-born children!" I thought. But still, I decided to bravely open the door for a better view. The trolls were in fact two Jehovah's Witnesses. And they didn't ring the doorbell because that obviously must have conflicted with their religious beliefs. Both were female, middle aged, and funny looking.
One was a regular Canadian Anglo-Saxon to my reckoning, and markedly unremarkable. Short, stubby, short brown hair, glasses. The other was an Italian woman, about a decade older than her cohort, and had a face plastered in a layer of make-up.
They greeted me cheerily, with a big warm choral "Hi!" They opened with a question that they must have felt was profound, so profound as to leave the poor non-believer or misguided Christian with a tongue in knots. It was this: "When people have problems and if they don't have answers to things, what do they do?"
My tongue was as loose as a toddler's shoelace though. I said, "Well, that all depends, doesn't it?" "If someone has a problem, they might go to others for help, they might read a self help book, they might see a psychologist, they might see their pastor or priest." If I felt like being a rascal, I could have also added, that some people resort to relentless fucking, drinking, smoking, and consumption, but I wanted to be taken somewhat seriously.I continued, "I know I personally find a way to solve problems on my own, I'm self-sufficient that way. And in regards to if someone doesn't know the answer to something, they can look it up in a book, on the internet, or ask someone who they know that might know." They were taken aback, and I knew they would be. The greeting you see, was merely a rhetorical tool, a segue into their trap, a segue into their attempt to indoctrinate anybody willing to give them a bit of their time.
They stood there, still in their plastic grins, the Anglo one said, "OK, well do you believe in God?" she decided to cut through the foreplay.
Again, she must have been expecting me to say, 'I'm spiritual' or something as empty, tame, and ambiguous as that. But I smiled, and said, "No, not at all." Again, she was taken aback.
She asked, "How do you think we got here? You believe in evolution?"
"I do."
"That's just a theory, a manmade theory."
"A theory that's being proven more correct by the day, all while diminishing he validity of the Bible's teachings. Whereas your belief of intelligent design holds no weight, we're so imperfect, and the world we live in has so many things out there to kill us or that have no efficiency to our well-being." I wanted to say, 'Why the fuck did God make flies, mosquitoes, and harmful bacteria? Shits and giggles?'
She switched off that topic and asked me, "Well why don't you believe in God?". I told her about me going to Christian schools for a good chunk of my educational career, and especially how going to a Catholic school in my last two years of high school really left me to confront the apocryphal, absurd, and irrational teachings of the church. They began to bash the Catholic church, which tickled me inside the way watching two Special Ed kids engage in insult competitions used to.
The Italian one became vocal, "I-ah come ah from-ah Italy. I-ah used to be a school-ah teacher there-ah. They-ah have-ah many things-ah wrong-ah!" This woman proved to have a jaw set upon springs. She would go on and on and on, and I honestly can't remember all she's said now.
When she was catching her breath, I finally said, "Listen, you do know that without the Catholic Church, you wouldn't even be Jehovah's Witnesses, right?"
They didn't know what I was getting at. Were they so ignorant that they thought that their church was around since the few thousand years ago that they believe planet Earth was hand crafted by God?"
This is when the Anglo Canadian unsheathed her mighty Bible. She began reading a verse to me, I don't know why, but right after she finished, I decided to pull a maneuver they usually show on crime and espionage shows and movies. The most surefire way for the culprits or hostages to evade the trouble and interrogation, is to swallow cyanide, or, if they can't afford cyanide, snap their necks like celery sticks.
My version was to say, "According to that Bible of yours, I'm already going to hell."
"Huh?"
"In Mark 3:29, it says that if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you can never be forgiven. You're going to hell, and that's final."
Again, she was dumbfounded. She flipped through the pages to see if I was full of shit, and she read it, it reads exactly like this:
Mark 3:29But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.
I had already refuted and blasphemed that imaginary, psychotic, narcissistic, voyeuristic, sadistic, bigoted, arbitrary, bastard years ago, so I'm done for, according to them. I thought, 'Checkmate! They'll go now, why would they waste their time on me now?' But they stayed. The Italian one came at me like a rabid dog. She would keep on rambling on and on and on about things, and whenever I tried to counter them, she wouldn't let me finish.
Finally, I said, "Please, I've had the courtesy to let you finish saying what you have to say. Why don't you show me the same respect?"
I asked them if they knew that Jesus is a plagiarized character. If they knew about the myriad of myths which existed way before Jesus existed, but which the Jesus story bears a striking resemblance to, dating back to Egypt in 3000 BC.
The Anglo said, "They're called myths for a reason! They're not true!" And I said,"Yes. You've seen movies haven't you? People, for the most part, won't say they're true." I wanted to add, 'except for wacko conspiracy theorists.' Then I continued, "But, at the end of each movie, you will see the year that it was released. That release labels what time the story was crafted. That is what I am saying, these stories were authored years before Jesus actually 'existed'."
By this time, they were losing patience with me. The Anglo tried to give me a Watchtower Jehovah's Wickedness propaganda magazine. I asked her if I could interpret what's being said in it as I see, she said, "No! You can't!"
Which was a set up for me to ask her, "But isn't what's written in the magazine some man's interpretation of your alleged words of God?"
That's when the Anglo grumbled, "We're not getting through to him, and stormed her way off, she trekked off for miles and miles while the Italian one stayed for a bit longer.
"You are a very smart-ah boy-ah with a lot of-ah knowledge of-ah things-ah. But these are-ah things-ah I not-ah care about!" She told me. "Everything I need to know, I learn from ah this-ah book-ah." She held up her mighty Bible.
I rebutted, "Well you should care about them, if everything you need to know about ties into that book. You can see how these things apply, and if they confirm what the Bible teaches."
She pointed to the blossoming vegetation on my lawn. "Everything in-ah world, God made! Everything-ah I-ah need to know in-ah this-ah book."
So I said, "So if you get sick, The Bible teaches you the medicines and first aid? Everything I need to know is in there? I've never heard of a doctor earning his medical degree from strictly reading The Bible. God invented engineering and computer science?"
That's when she finally started heading for the screen door. She stopped in front of me one more time and told me, "I not-ah hear for argue OK!"
I said, "If you're coming to a person's house, trying to convert them, you better be prepared for a fight."
"I not-ah here to convert. I-ah here to spread news!" Oh yes, and 'Curious' George 'Pubic' Bush isn't committing war crimes which warrant lynching which should be captured on cell phone like Saddam Hussein, he's just playing an oversized game of Stratego which has no resolution!
Anyway, she said again, "I not here for fight!"
To which I said, "Well that's unfortunate," and shut the door on her. From there, she probably scurried after her colleague. They must've bantered about how much of an arrogant asshole I was. They must have returned to their Jehovah's Wickedness headquarters undersea to tell their superiors of the troubled youth they encountered. They must have prayed about me while having dreams of watching me burn in hell.
