On a plane from Miami to Tampa last week, I sat next to a young fellow coming back from the Dominican Republic, where he spent some time building a small medical center. He and about a dozen of his yellow-shirted co-workers were all on the same flight, and they all sat around me.
He was the chatty sort, where I typically tend not to be. But this is OK since I have a fairly versatile personality if I’m feeling cooperative. So he’s telling me about his adventure, and I, genuinely interested, ask him follow-up questions and it’s all very cordial. He steered the conversation toward religion by continually asking me whether or not I go to church. I say that I haven’t been to a church since that wedding in Canada I attended back in 1999. He asks why. So I casually say that I’m an atheist. You would have thought that I spat in his face the way he reacted.
“You’re an atheist?” he asks loud enough for his co-workers to hear. It’s at this point that I realize that the organization all these yellow-shirted zealots belong to is a religious-based, non-profit, volunteer, missionary type organization. I wish I remember the exact name so I could provide a link to their site. This link will have to do instead.
So he proceeds to ask me the very first question that dozens of other religious people have asked me when they discover my stance on God. They all ask the exact same question…
“So, you don’t believe in anything?”
I tell him that just because I reject the idea of a supreme being does not mean I have zero beliefs, like some nihilist procrastinator. (?) I tell him that I believe in (what I call) Quasi-Absolute Morality, which is my own personal take on moral relativism. It employs a bell-curve paradigm with intelligence on the x-axis and population on the y-axis. Most of the people in the curve (like you and I) share much the same morals on things like incest, murder, adultery, theft, etc. At the ends of the bell curve, we have the really intelligent people (like Leopold and Loeb, Ted Bundy, Hitler, Nixon, Woody Allen, etc.) as well as the really stupid people, both groups of which have relatively different moral views, depending on their particular situation.
Well, he doesn’t like this at all. So he gives me all the standard God questions like…
“Where do you think people came from?” Evolution.
“Do you believe in heaven and hell?” No and no.
“Do you think Jesus Christ was a real person?” Yes.
“Do you believe in eternity?” You mean, like this plane ride?
Which brings me to my next not-so-shocking observation. Why is it when an atheist and a reverent person get together to discuss religion, it’s ALWAYS the religious type that attacks/tries to recruit the atheist? Why does the atheist feel it unnecessary to try to “turn” the religious person?
Here’s the next not-at-all-shocking statement. I believe that fundamentalism breeds severe intolerance. We need only look at groups like the Skinheads, Islamic fundamentalists, the KKK, Pro-Life groups, the Bush Administration (just kidding) to see many fine examples of this attitude. I’m committed to my own beliefs as much as all these groups are because they allow me to function with a set of guidelines. What I do not feel in the slightest is to “pitch” or “push” these beliefs on anyone else. They’re for me only.
Honestly, I wasn’t in the mood for a religious debate on a cramped 757. I just wanted to start my vacation; I wasn’t really pushing very hard. So he asks one of his co-volunteers to reach into their carry-on to retrieve a bible, so that he can read Revelations to me. I stop him there and say, “Dude, I know you mean well and everything, but reading the bible to me isn’t going to work. I appreciate the effort, truly.”
So we arrived in Tampa, we exchanged pleasantries, we got on the little shuttle that took us to the greeting area, then we parted ways. Later in the parking lot, he was struck by lightning. He died instantly.
I made that last part up, but wouldn’t that have been funny?
Hey, check out this really cool lunar animation.