I got chatted up by two ladies for five minutes before one of them pulled out a Jehovah’s Witness bookmark and implored me to visit the church’s website. She seemed diffident. And her partner was looking down as if embarrassed.
I didn’t feel guilty about interrupting the spiel and contradicting her because of the disingenuous way she had used friendly conversation as a pretext to poop out her religious nonsense right there in front of me. No one likes having a nice conversation only to suddenly get a sales pitch at the end.
I should have said something about how I did not believe, but was convinced by, the evidence for a large, old universe, with natural selection driving life on Earth; and that we should not be preoccupied with ideas about cartoonish gods, but instead focus on improving ourselves and the environment in the here and now.
But instead I mumbled some kind of thank you and said I would check out the site. I don’t have the rhetorical skills or the energy to take a stand with every evangelist I meet.
Included: a primordial-looking island at Veterans Park in Richfield, MN.
pseudoisaac 