Using Me!

Jehovah’s witnesses at my door

So yesterday two Jehovah’s witnesses came to my house whilst I was out front having a smoke. I took the time to talk to them while I finished my cigarette and my cup of tea. It was quite fun.

I made it clear when they asked right at the start that I was an Atheist who had once been a Christian so we had a solid understanding of our starting points. Their first question to me was how I felt about the recent comments from scientists about God in the media. I immediately felt that they did not actually know what was being said by whom especially when they couldn’t remember Richard Dawkins’ name and for the fact that it was actually Hawking who made the press this week with his belief that M-Theory closes the gaps that he said MIGHT exist in ‘A Brief History of Time’. So I didn’t lambaste them for this I merely stated that I broadly agreed with them.

So instead they asked me why I didn’t believe in God. I decided to go with something simple and stated infinite regression as one reason. Unfortunately they couldn’t grasp the idea that if you decide to complicate matters by requiring a God to create a universe then you can equally require a god to create the god and so on… They were quite sure that the God who created this universe doesn’t require a creator. I was getting nowhere so I didn’t even try invoking Occam’s Razor which would just have confused them further.

The lady who was leading the conversation from ‘their’ side pressed me on the fact that God’s word is there for you to see in the bible. I did not mention that their God only represents a tiny proportion of the people on the planet although when pressed I did point out that their version of truth is only as old and only as reliable as the versions espoused by other people. However I did point out repeatedly that this bible was concocted by the Roman Catholic church during various councils from a MUCH larger canon that already existed at the time. They both seemed entirely unaware of the existence of other forms of christianity and neither of them had read any of the other gospels which exist.

In fact they went so far as to say that through God’s influence the proper content of the bible had been formed despite being ignorant of the fact that other versions had existed. I even told them that gnostic christianity seemed much more appealing to me. A religion based on enlightenment seems far more appropriate than one based on sin. Again they had no answer.

When I pressed them on contradictions in the bible they demanded that I find one. Since I didn’t have one at my immediate recall, although there are dozens, I turned the conversation to rules in the bible. I asked if they ate pork or shellfish and when they said yes I pointed out that both are disallowed in the old testament. They said that times had changed and that the bible had to be interpreted in the times we live in. I pointed out that the bible doesn’t say ‘Thou shalt not eat shellfish until such time as you have invented the refrigerator’ and they seemed to shrug this off as inconsequential. They made some mention of the ‘law on blood’ hasn’t changed because it was ‘renewed in the new testament’ and therefore ‘is valid’. In which case why not ignore the WHOLE old testament???

I was really close to asking whether they went to church when they had their periods since the same parts of the O.T. mention not allowing your women to go when they are menstruating but I didn’t want to be offensive to that degree!

I asked them by what mechanism that hypothesised God could work in the Universe since he is outside of it. Indeed I challenged them. They claimed that God works in the world so I claimed that therefore there must be a mechanism that he does so by. Therefore one can hypothesise what that mechanism is and scientists can test it. They quite simply did not understand, even when I promised that if they came up with this hypothesis and proved it then I would accept everything they said.

To move things on a bit I then suggested that in order to be a Christian one would have to have genuine free will. I told them that I was a materialist and that they must be dualists or pluralists. Therefore a simple proposition for them would be to provide a testable hypothesis by which the mechanism of dualism or pluralism could be proven. By this point both looked ready to leave.

And with a few words about how no-one can do anything without hope and how we were clearly ‘coming at the debate from opposite sides’ the Jehovah’s Witnesses gave up and left me to my sin and my damnation.

Next please!!