God on the Quad

A couple days ago there were some evangelical christians on the Quad of the ISU campus near the SUB. I am a pragmatic atheist/philosophical agnostic, and I know where conversations with x-ians usually go, so I don’t normally approach them. However, since my fellow atheist Sayler was with me, we did go ask them a question that ended up being a 30 minute discussion/debate.

I will say this, the x-ians were well informed on the history of the Bible. It caught me off guard that they actually knew a fair amount about how the bible was compiled (more than I did at any rate), so I had to abandon this line of debate if I was to have reached any higher ground. It’s definitely a bad idea to start arguing the point of historical credibility with someone who potentially knows more than you do – it can lead to nasty surprises.

After the encounter, I was just pissed off… mostly because the discussion ended around the point where one x-ian said that in a universe without a god, there is no morality, yet a universe with a god fills humans with a moral sense/conscience that even atheists will have, regardless of their stance on the existence of god. Essentially, they claimed that the only reason I care about other people is because god loves me. There’s just no way to argue against that.

I also began thinking about what I could have said or done better at the beginning of the conversation so that I didn’t come off as a rude, bitchy atheist that’s just out to hate any concept of god, because that’s not what I’m fundamentally about. Here are a few things I came up with:

• At the beginning, I wish I had said something to the effect of, “Hi, I have a question, but let me preface it with the following points.
  1. I am an atheist/agnostic, and you a x-ian. Let’s not have a discussion trying to convince each other of our own beliefs, because it is a tired one that only leaves us both embittered.
  2. I like civil conversations, but I don’t like being accused of immorality. Please acknowledge, for the sake of conversation, that I am capable of being a person of integrity without a deity’s help. We can argue this point, but repeating your premise as evidence of its truth won’t help to convince me, and it only makes you sound ignorant.
  3. My fundamental reason for asking a question is that I am curious why people think differently than I do. I may be able to predict some of your responses since some are fairly common, so please avoid the preach-y language and cut to the chase. Keep it real. Quoting the bible doesn’t really help – I’m really just interested in your personal experience, what convinced you the most, etc. – I’m not in it to determine the absolute truth of something during this conversation.
  4. With that, my question is: What, fundamentally, is the most vivid experience you have ever had that convinced you the most of god’s existence and/or that your flavor of religion was the “true” one?
• I should probably bring the list of 21 unconvincing arguments for god as a quick reference / something to point to that will avoid going over tired arguments in case they bring them up. Download a nice PDF to print it off for yourself! (*.pdf)

Oh, and I recorded this entire 30 minute conversation (*.mp3 , ~3Mb) with my Muvo v100 mp3 player. The audio isn’t that bad, but you’ll have to turn up the volume to hear it. There are some parts where people are talking over each other.. sorry about that.

One thing is for sure.. before I approach another x-ian, I’m definitely going to think over what I really want to talk to them about first. I did not do well with this first confrontation on campus, but I’d like to do better.

~ by David on 2007 September 28, Friday.