so i went to the burien strawberry and arts festival again today. it was raining on and off, so i didn’t sell as much incense, which left an awful lot of time for me to answer more questions. at one point a guy came up and asked the perennial question: what does your car say. i answered him, like i answer everyone (at this point i could probably recite this line in my sleep) that it is “the first one hundred names of the one thousand and eight names of ganesha, the hindu God of Removing Obstacles.” he then asked some other questions about why i did it and so forth, and then he said something that i should have recognised, and ended the conversation right there. he said “but what happens when you die?” if i had been thinking more quickly, i would have made some excuse to end the conversation then, but i said “i go to heaven.” to which he said “based on what?” to which i replied “my belief in God.” he then said “but what about the exclusive claim that jeezis made when he said (john 14:6)?” i replied that it wasn’t an exclusive statement, because Kṛṣṇa made a similar statement (bhagavad gita 8.3) over 2000 years before jeezis, and that people have been saying similar things ever since humans first developed language. he asked me why nobody has ever heard of this “ganesha” before, and when i told him that ganesha was the second most widely worshipped deity in the world, and that if he went to india he would be inundated with material about ganesha, he said that he had worked in he had worked in india for a year and never heard of him, to which i responded that he probably hadn’t talked to the right people. then tried to nail me on some “subtle” point of logic, which i circumvented by saying something he had never heard before (big surprise), which is that God is one. he then asked me where that is located in the bible. because of my general lack of interest in debating with “christians” since my injury, i don’t know where that particular scripture is located in the bible (although i know it’s in there somewhere), so he pulled out a PDA and searched for it! and when he couldn’t find those exact words, he proceded to tell me how wrong i was about everything. he kept ranting, not letting me get a word in edgewise, and when i finally interrupted him (the stupidity had gone on long enough) he asked if he could “finish his thought”, and when i said “no” he walked away.
grrr!
it’s just as well, i was verging on punching him, which would have looked bad, regardless of how satisfying it would have felt.
i’m beginning to understand why muslims refer to “christians” as “people of the book”… it’s almost as if the guy was saying “if it’s not in the bible, i don’t believe it”.
“if it’s not in the bible, i don’t believe it”.
I’m sure that’s exactly what he was saying. It’s good he walked away when you said no. I would have been at the same point you were at.
Fair enough. That’s one way of removing obstacles, I suppose – having them wander away before they try to get entrenched.
at this point i’m just as glad that he went away. if someone is going to start a “conversation” with me and then walk away before it’s finished, i find that to be particularly rude, regardless of what else is going on, and, if nothing else, i’m pretty sure it’s not what jesus would have done. at the same time, once i am over the shock of having them walk away, it’s a lot easier on me than it would have been if they had stayed and finished the conversation, regardless of how amusing the outcome might have been if they had stayed.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Quite handy, too. But you know, with those types, I’ve found that their failures at converting don’t really weigh on them badly. In fact, they tend to believe that you were a test of their faith, and that while your place in Hell is assured, they’re more confident that they’re heaven-bound because they were able to resist your temptation.
unfortunately, he didn’t even get to see that… but at the same time, i’m sure he’ll be praying for me to “see the light”, especially since his “testimony” didn’t seem to be doing any good… and if he won’t, then he’ll have to live with the knowledge that, because he failed to convince me, i will probably be going to hell… which, i can only hope, will weigh on his conscience…
with all the “christians” that have failed to convince me and said that they would be praying for me, it’s as good a proof as any that their “god” doesn’t exist, because if “he” did, i would have been convinced by now… 8/
Don’t feel too bad about it – there are some of those people that could make a con man give them his shorts. Doesn’t raise their intelligence any, nor does it alleviate the frustration when, even when you’re shredding them, they just continue on as if nothing happened. As you said, it would have been wiser to walk away, had you recognized the problem before it got out of hand. Hopefully, they also got an eyeful of your “I Am A Terrorist” button before they left, feeling sumg and superior – at least that way, they’d have to wonder if you were really being brazen about it or just making a statement.
generally, as long as the “christian” doesn’t try to involve me in their fantasies, i’m willing to let them believe whatever they will. but it gets really irritating, and doubly so now that i have brain-injury-induced aphasia to deal with as well, when they insist on involving me in their fantasies and then walk away before i’ve had the opportunity to totally confuse them, regardless of how stupid they are.
like i said, i was on the verge of punching the guy, which is a level of frustration i never would have gotten to before my injury… i could think of all sorts of things to say, but i couldn’t find the words fast enough to keep up with his insane rantings… he kept going on and on with his “thought”, which had so many holes in it that, before my injury, i could have torn it to shreds, using biblical passages complete with scripture references, without even thinking about it… 8P
He was saying “If it’s not in the Bible, I don’t believe it” regardless as to whether it might have actually been in the bible that he had on him. Whatever his own personal bible was, that was what he was taking as Ultimate Truth, all other truths be damned. People like that are no more Christian than the ones that advocate for the killing of others or the institution of a theocratic empire.