Atheist and Creationist Share Lunch Everyday
The bible belt is chock full of young earth creationists and the state of Tennessee is no exception. Some rational people with a basic understanding of modern science might feel this statement is exaggerated and find it hard to accept the notion that some people really do believe the universe was created in only 7 days about 6,000 years ago. But I know for a fact there are people with these beliefs because I eat lunch with one of these christian fundamentalists every weekday.
Yes you read that correctly. I am an atheist that eats lunch with a very devout christian every day Mon-Fri. For ease I will refer to this creationist for the rest of this article as Christian. Before people make assumptions I will state up front that although he shares very irrational beliefs, Christian is a fairly intelligent and quite sane other than being harboring delusional ideas related to his christian faith.
A little more I have learned about Christian. He is in his mid forties, has lived here in TN his entire life, and is the Church of Christ flavour of christianity. Christian was raised in the same church that he attends now and is a deacon in it. He is married, has a kid and is pretty much an average American except for his seemingly crazy beliefs.
Typically during lunch, Christian and I will play cards and discuss the latest news and events on both the local and national level. Even though it has come up a few times and we know that we have conflicting views on religion we generally keep things professional and avoid involving religion in our discussions. Neither of us is afraid to include our beliefs or lack of in the conversation if it is a reason why one of us has a particular view on something.
Creationism Comes Up
One day among discussions of the CERN project’s Large Hadron Collider being referred to as “the Big Bang machine” in the news media and the price of oil and how the United States should begin drilling in the ANWR region (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) of Alaska despite the environmental issues, creationism came up. I was explaining how it was silly they had given it that name to try to stir up controversy and that its goal wasn’t to recreate the big bang really but to allow them to learn more of what might have happened just after it increasing the understanding of how the universe was formed as well as search for the Higgs boson particle that would fill in large chunks of the subatomic model.
Christian agreed, giving it that name was silly but for a very different reason. He said because “it never happened that way, god created everything.” I replied that the big bang is what the current evidence is supporting according physicists much smarter than he or I. He said maybe, but it could have been put in place that way.
I decided to change the subject and brought up the price of oil going up. We started talking about how the US needed to dig in Alaska. Christian said he thought it was amazing to him how much oil is pumped out daily that he didn’t think it came from dinosaurs because we use so much of it. I replied that it wasn’t just dinosaurs there was also millions of years of plant life growing and dying of as well. Next came the most perplexing thing, he said he didn’t think the earth was that old.
I knew he was a christian but I had always assumed he also had a decent understanding of science. I asked, “Oh, so your a young earth creationist? You think the earth is less than ten thousand years old?” Christian said yes and that he thought it was about six thousand years old. I asked what about dinosaur bones and fossils though. He had two explanations, either they lived with humans early on and died out in noah’s flood and this helped create fossils or it was part of gods plan and he purposely created them and put them there when he created everything.
Even though I hadn’t mentioned it Christian then stated that he didn’t believe in evolution either because the earth was not that old. I asked, “But what about all the scientific evidence that supports evolution.” He then explained how he thought there was no real evidence and that it couldn’t be observed. I told him there was mountains of evidence but he simply said, “Not really.” I brought up the recent discovery of the nylon eating bacteria as proof of evolution in action. He simply said its still bacteria, it didn’t evolve into a new species. He said he never said things didn’t change over time but the bacteria was still a bacteria and doesn’t demonstrate evolution really.
I was dumbfounded. I could no longer argue because there seemed to be no point in doing so. I don’t think any argument, no matter how convincing, would have changed Christian’s mind. We simply had to agree not to agree.
There were no bad feelings and Christian said he enjoyed discussing such topics with me because I didn’t get angry for him not agreeing with me. I like talking with him too although I hold back directly criticizing his beliefs in order not to offend him. I do see him everyday so there is no reason to start unneeded conflict especially when there is so little to sway his beliefs anyway.
Well educated people like Christian that deny scientific evidence in order to justifying their religious beliefs can be found all over Tennessee and the surrounding states. Even though in modern times information about the age of the earth and the evolution of life on this planet can be easily located at no cost there are many christian creationists that still do not seek out this knowledge . How long can this denial keep going for. As the scientific method keeps churning out mounds and mounds of this evidence when will it be enough for these people to see that their bible is not an accurate account of the origins of this planet, its life or the entire universe for that matter.
This article has been a description of one of the lunch’s I, the TN Atheist, had with a young earth creationist named Christian a few weeks ago. I still continue to have lunch with him and will be sure to write future articles about anything I learn from this creationist that shares a very different view of the world than most atheists.
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