Here’s the gist of the conversation I had the other day with a Catholic over this story and the headline “Publisher, editor out over wafer story”:
Catholic: I’m offended by this headline. It’s disrespectful to Catholics.
Me: No, it’s not. It’s accurate. It’s a wafer.
Catholic: No, it’s the Consecrated Host.
Me: To you, maybe. But to the rest of us, it’s a wafer.
Catholic: Would you call a yarmulke a beanie?
Me: Of course not. A yarmulke is actually what that thing is called. A beanie is something completely different.
Catholic: This conversation is over.
Did I say something wrong?
Was that a conversation I should’ve even tried to have?
…
Reader Richard also had a conversation with a deeply religious person recently. Here’s how he describes it:
Two days ago I was engaged in a two-hour conversation on a flight with a fundamentalist Christian who believed, among other things, that the Tribulation was coming in six months, gays were the root of all evil, prayers needed to be in public schools, etc. He was also convinced of the existence of god because of the many miracles he had witnessed while on mission trips. Obviously he was a complete literalist.
He also used to be a drunk before he found god. And he thinks Ray Comfort is a genius. In essence, he was the antithesis of everything I believe and my perfect caricature of a fundie.
I relished talking to him, to set him straight with my brilliant arguments, but at the end, he insisted that I would convert at some point and that both he and Jesus loved me.
I felt that he came away more convinced that he might have saved a lost soul than I was convinced that I had taught some reason to a religious nut.
Richard also wonders: Is it even worth having that discussion when everything you say just goes in one ear and out the other?
Why try to reason with someone whose faith will automatically trump anything you have to say?
Arkansas Senate Committee Defeats (!) Bill ..."
Arkansas Senate Committee Defeats (!) Bill ..."
Arkansas Senate Committee Defeats (!) Bill ..."
Here’s How Well-Known Atheists Are Defending ..."