I forgot all about this!

After a recent update to my iPad, I went through a bunch of my old notes and realized I never posted my series of debates with a former friend. Since I went on one of my usual hiatuses from this blog, I figured I may as well post these for posterity.

Let me start with my friend, Shawn. He always was a bit odd, a pseudo-intellectual with an Oedipal Complex, but I tolerated his intolerance and ignorance because we had been friends literally since middle school. We now live about 1,300 miles apart, but we always chatted on the phone or via computer, and when I returned home I would be sure to carve out a day or so for him and when he came here to see his parents, he carved out a day for me. Well, about six years ago we had a falling out when I continued to make time for him but he refused to make time for me.

Fast-forward to about two years ago and a dear friend of mine died instantly of a brain aneurysm. It got me to thinking and on a whim, I decided to call Shawn after not speaking for five years. We chatted for a bit and I told him why I had severed ties with him, but since my friend died, I decided it might have been foolish not to repair this relationship. He apologized for being insensitive and he admitted he screwed up and that he missed me. He was appreciative that I reached out and basically said he has no friends, that I was his last good friend.

During this conversation, he asked me if anything big had happened in my life and one of the topics I mentioned was that I came out to my friends and family as an atheist. He and I never really had religious conversations when we were daily friends, and I admit, back then I wasn’t religious but I never gave it any critical thought. And this point is interesting because when I would get together with Shawn, we would have some rather serious discussions about life, but religion never really entered the fray.

So I deliberately made sure to ask: Is this a dealbreaker for you? Does it bother you that I’m an atheist? In fact, I consider myself a militant atheist, so I need to know if you can’t be friends with someone who is an atheist because I don’t want to waste any more time. He assured me it didn’t faze him in the least and he even made a joke. I told him that made me happy because one of the other reasons I reached out to him was I was starving for some intelligent discourse. While I have a few people in my life who are smart, very few of them want to have thought-provoking conversations. I missed that part of our relationship and was happy he wanted to discuss my deconversion.

But since we hadn’t spoken in five years, we kept this initial conversation light, with the promise to explore at a later date some of the critical thinking I had done. A few days later, we chatted again and he asked me how I arrived at atheism. I told him he knew I was never religious, and he agreed, but then wanted to know how I knew there was no god. I took that moment to educate him about what atheism actually means.

It’s so important for the ignorant to understand what atheism and agnosticism really mean. After that lesson, he wanted an example of when a belief I had was shattered by evidence. I told him about Mother Teresa and how she was a charlatan who questioned her faith and basically didn’t believe. I laid out all of the facts, mentioned how she treated the sick, etc. I also told him I would email him some links to videos of documentaries about her. He appreciated that. And this is when the beginning of the end occurred.

I also mentioned the Great Flood and how preposterous that story is, that it’s a plagiarized myth (see the Epic of Gilgamesh for starters) that has been told and retold by other religions before it was written in the Old Testament. He kind of went silent here. No reaction.

A few days later, he accused me of being ”certain“ the flood never happened and that I should couch my comments with indefinite or softer phrases. I asked him if he thought there was evidence of a global flood and he said yes. He also said science led him to believe the universe had a creator. This shocked me. Earlier in this post I said Shawn was pseudo-intellectual, and I say this because he is well-read but his cognitive skills are lacking. So we agreed the flood and beginning of the universe could be topics we should debate, and we also agreed we should do it via email. That is where I’ll start my next post.