I just finished up a 20 minute discussion with two 20 something guys who happened to knock at the door carrying bibles.  I knew right away they were missionaries of some sort, but my first thought was that they were Mormons, although I didn't ask until near the end of our conversation only to learn that they were Jehovah's Witnesses.  Essentially it didn't matter what kind of religious missionary showed up, I'm happy to argue with them all.

Either way it didn't matter because I actually enjoy the look on missionaries faces, which for whatever reason love this part of town, when I tell them that I'm an atheist.  The two were incredibly polite and began by telling me that they just wanted me to know that God loves me and read a passage from the bible to ease my mind on fearful things like the recent earthquakes.  I thanked them and then told them that I had read the bible many times and was at one point a Catholic, but was now an atheist, and that we would be hard pressed to find any common ground.  I wanted to be up front and honest if we were going to have a conversation, so I added that the bible was a fairy tale, or a mythology, and that morality is not derived form the bible.

The two men just smiled at me and responded with several lines of attack which I was already aware of, so it was a bit of a cake walk.  Before we got into the nitty gritty, the guy on the left (I never got their names) responded quickly to my comment on being atheist and that morality does not come from the bible by saying, "yes, some people choose to murder and some don't."  I'm not exactly sure what he was getting at, but it seemed like he was saying atheists are somehow deciding to be murderers.  I'm not sure though.

Anyway, the guy on the left did most of the talking and asked me if I had faith enough in God to help get us through these tough times with people blowing themselves up in the name of their false religions.  I interjected and said that all religions and walks of life have extremists, and proceeded to fire off a few of the horrible things done in the name of Christianity (it would have taken hours to recant all of them).  They nodded while looking down at the ground and changed the subject to what gave me pleasure.

They asked, "do you get pleasure from the trees, or the grass, or the mountains?"

"Yes," I said.

I was greeted with broad smiles and knowing looks as if they had just explained something earth shattering to me, but I didn't get it apparently.  I couldn't understand the why they thought they just proved God's existence to me, so I asked if they could elaborate on it.  The guy on the right piped up and said, "say you were walking through a forest and you saw a shack.  Would you ask yourself who made it?"

My response to that was, "I would assume some other human being built it."

Again I got the knowing looks and broad smiles, as if they were excited for a child who was just about to take its first step onto the path to enlightenment.  Seeing that I was hesitating, yet hopeful that a breakthrough was imminent for their young, handsome student, they decided to take on evolution and save my soul.  The guy on the right asked me if I had ever wondered where my sense of taste came from, or my sense of touch, or our eyes or essentially why we were perfect.  Of course we all know the human species evolved into what it is today, much like every other organism, but it was a true joy for me to explain why the human eye is no where near perfect if made by a God or creator.  If anything the human eye illustrates perfectly the process of evolution because it is such a poorly designed piece of equipment than any God would be ashamed of.

After the evolution portion of the conversation happened I finally understood what they were getting at with the looks and smiles and junk.  They didn't know it, but they were crudely referring to Thomas Aquinas and his theory of a "First Mover", the idea that if everything has a cause, or creator, and if you follow the "logical" path backwards from who built the shack in the woods all the way to who made the trees you end up at God.  Unfortunately for them the argument isn't evidence of anything, although I have to give them credit for trying hard.

It was around this time that the conversation was coming to an end and I found out they were Jehovah's Witnesses.  I had heard that only a limited number of people get into heaven in their religion so I asked them if that was the case, they said that it was case and the number was already filled so neither of them would be going to heaven, although the earth was apparently going to be turned back into paradise at some point.

Just before they left, they thanked me and reiterated their desire that they just wanted to pop on by to tell me God loves me, and that I could get in on their Paradise on earth if I wanted to believe in what they do.

To this I said, "I hate to break it to you guys, but your paradise on earth is going to get swallowed up by the sun in about 5 billion years."