The old ones are the best ones

Being an unabashed Atheist and not being overly concerned about telling people about it, I do have interesting conversations at work sometimes; people tend to fall into two distinct camps, those that want to talk about it and those that avoid the subject at all costs. It is interesting that most people think of Atheism as being like religion, i.e. something that should not be discussed in public, I've even overheard people whispering "he's a practising Atheist" when talking about me, how funny; I wonder what rituals I should be doing, mumbling to myself at my local shrine to Dawkins perhaps?

Occasionally I get "challenged" (in a friendly way) someone has heard some question or other that they think I can't possibly address and to which the only logical explanation is God, they often take some measure of delight in confronting me with it in an "and another thing" manner. I find it fascinating to observe how mythology is so deep seated in some people even if they aren't religious, and the ignorance of even basic concepts of using rational thought to test ideas is surprising sometimes.

I thought I would share a snippet of one such conversation I had this morning, one of my pals burst into my office and asked me, "Did you hear the atheist camp thing on the radio this morning?", I hadn't but I knew what he was talking about, he went on to triumphantly say that the women representing the camp had done an awful job of representing "my side", he said the interviewer had asked some really deep and searching questions that had stumped her. This tweaked my interest so I asked what questions?

"How do you explain love and emotions", was the reply in a tone that suggested he thought the question to be unanswerable, biochemistry created by natural selection in order to facilitate a stable family unit for the purposes of successful reproduction, I said, otherwise you wouldn't be able to explain how chemical substances like alcohol and barbiturates alter our emotional state so much, its just brain chemistry. He seemed dissatisfied with this answer, and felt the need to pose another question, "yes but what about the big bang", how do you explain that, I don't know I answered, I'm not a physicist but there are several promising theories and the work at the LHC should help us figure out some of the finer points that the standard model doesn't address currently, he had an expression on his face like I was talking Greek. He went on, yes but now that the Catholic church accepts evolution and science can't explain how the first cell was created there must be a god, "ah" I said, the god of the gaps argument, he frowned, "what?", I went on to explain that religious people often fill the gaps in our scientific knowledge with God, i.e. wherever there is something we don't know they fill the gap with "god must have done it" as if "magic" is some kind of satisfying explanation. Over the years though the gaps have been getting less and less as the body of scientific knowledge has increased. It's a dangerous game to play I said, and somewhat pointless because it replaces something unknown with something even more unknowable, he looked indignant. I went on to explain that there are several promising theories regarding how the first RNA and cellular structures could have formed and we already know that the chemistry of the early universe was conducive to organic molecules forming spontaneously, but we weren't there so we may never know for sure. I turned the question back on him and asked; "If God created the first cell who did he think created God?", clearly he'd never thought about that.

I must admit it was far too early for such a heavy conversation and we hadn't even had our first cup of tea yet so we laughed and switched subjects to the business of the day, but I could tell the cogs had started turning in his mind; hopefully we can continue the conversation over a beer sometime it would be interesting to understand his perspective better.

An entire culture can be changed forever with a only handful of words.