Ineffectual Evangelicals
I had my first contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses yesterday morning. It was a quiet morning, I was packing boxes since I'm moving in the next week, and I was a little bored with the process. So, I'm not going to launch into a lengthy diatribe about how I don't like being bothered at home. I actually saw them mulling around my apartment complex before they showed up at my door, and I willed them (you could say I prayed for them) to venture to my threshold.
I would say there were two takeaways: one, most of what they said genuinely surprised me, and two, I was surprised at just how unprepared and unconvincing they were. (This article might be better titled, "How to Be a Better Evangelist".)
There were two women who knocked on my door, one about fifteen or twenty years older than me, and one about ten years younger than me. (I'm 36 now.) I suspect this was a master-apprentice relationship, since the elder one did almost all of the talking.
The opening was her saying they were spreading the "good news" and they asked me if they could play me a two-minute video. Both of them had tablets.
I've been in Silicon Valley for over two years now, and I still haven't gotten used to the fact that technology seems to have sunk its tendrils into every aspect of our lives, and continues to, with just about everyone cheering it on from the sidelines.
"No," I replied simply. "If you have some sort of sales pitch, let's hear from you."
I can't imagine any other domain where this approach of door-to-door recruitment would be socially acceptable. If you knock on my door attempting to sell a vacuum cleaner, for example, I'm not going to part with my hard-earned money in exchange for your contraption until you've demonstrated, with your own aptitude, a thorough knowledge and belief in the product.
They indentified themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses at this point, and I told them, quite politely, "I'm not a Christian, and really have no interest in embracing any particular denomination of the faith."
"What do you believe in, then?" they asked.
"I believe in science, scientific progress, and in the scientific method of inquiry, and the knowledge that proceeds from it," I said.
"Oh," they replied quickly, "the Bible covers science."
I shook my head at this. "I don't really think science is the purview of the Bible. Where does it talk about science?"
"In Isaiah," they said. "Here, let us pull up the verse..."
"Nope," I said. "I don't trust Christian renderings of the Hewbrew scriptures. I have a Jewish Bible, let me fetch it." I grabbed it from my shelf, brought it back to the door, and looked up the passage they quoted: Isaiah 40:22. This passage reads: "He sits enthroned above the circumference of the earth..."
At this point, you would have thought they might have taken the hint, since I had not-so-subtly reminded them that the scripture they were claiming had been appropriated from another faith. It's a thumbing of the nose, perhaps, but I remind you that I did not knock on their door.
"I don't understand," I said of the passage. "How is this science?"
"Don't you see? They predicted that the earth was round!"
I think they meant to say that the earth was a sphere, since circles are round. Even granting that, even circles have a circumference, which I didn't bother to point out. I also ignored the fact that nothing in or around the passage says anything about the earth being a sphere.
"I would say this falls under the umbrella of a stopped clock being right twice a day," I said. "It's an awful lot of words in here, so some of the things they said were bound to look correct in hindsight. And besides, that the earth is round doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would have been impossible to ascertain at the time this was written."
Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, who lived in Alexandria, computed the circumference of the earth (knowing it was a sphere) with stunning accuracy in 240 B.C., using simple geometry and light falling down two wells that were a known distance apart. Isaiah predates this by a few hundred years, and the Israelites don't quite seem like the Greeks, but I digress.
They didn't seem satisfied with this dismissal, so they pulled up the passage in their own Bibles in their own tablets. One of them held it out to me, and we read it together: "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth..." At that point, they quickly gave this one up.
"They also predicted the fall of Babylon," they said. I shrugged this off. The passage they referenced said nothing of timeframe, only that it would fall. All the civilizations in the history of the world have fallen eventually, and all of them will, much in the way that all individuals will eventually die. This cannot be counted as prophecy.
Next they offered the example of hygiene. I agreed in the affirmative, conceding that the Jewish laws of cleanliness almost certainly saved countless lives in those days. I offered the example of isolating a new born baby for eight days after it had been born, ostensibly for religious and ceremonial reasons, but pragmatically it probably kept their young immune systems from contracting a wealth of diseases.
I said this to them as a friendly concession, to let them know that I was open to what they were saying, but inwardly, having a different discourse. Getting back to the Babylon, let's take one example: we have writings from their cuneiform tablets that prescribe that a person eat a slice of liver if they are afflicted with "night blindness". Today we know that night blindness is caused by a deficiency in Vitamin A, which livers are rich in. While the medicinal practices of the Babylonians were far from what we know today, many of their folk remedies worked quite well, and would still work even today. It's only because of modern medicine that we know why, and the why is the critical element of this understanding.
"But," I said, getting back to the Jewish laws of hygeine, "this doesn't seem like something that even a primitive people would be incapable of figuring out for themselves, without the help of a divine power." For people who don't believe we evolved from apes, religious people don't seem to give our distant ancestors a whole lot of credit.
At this point, they seemed at a loss, so I asked them how old they thought the earth was. Namely, I asked if their viewpoint was that of the "young-earth creationists".
"Oh no!" they reassured me. "The earth is quite old. Very old. Millions...of years...at least. But we don't know how old it really is."
4.6 billion years, by current estimates. I held my tongue.
"How long do you think human beings have existed on the planet?" I asked. There's an incompatibility here; I'm digging for it.
"Oh, we believe in the story of Adam and Eve, so about 6,000 years," they said.
"So, scientists believe that all human beings on the planet descended from a small tribe of hunter-gatherers that migrated out of Africa 50,000 years ago. You would claim that they're wrong about this?"
The elder one nodded solemnly at me. There was more than a hint of pity in her eyes.
"So," I went on, "you believe that everything in Bible is meant to be taken as literal truth?"
"Oh no!" they reassured me. "Not all of that stuff can be true, of course. We don't believe all of it."
"So you don't believe in the flood?" I asked. Nope, they do. "The tower of Babel?" Yep, they believe that one. "The exodus?" Hook, line, and sinker.
"So what don't you think is literally true in the Bible?" I asked, not wanting to continue enumerating all the possibilities.
"Well", said the younger one, speaking up for almost the first time, "Jesus teaches us something that isn't literally true. It's something about a needle..." She trailed off, digging in her memory banks for it. "Ah, I can't remember," she said, giving up after several seconds of silence.
"No, no," I insisted. "Now I'm curious about what you're referring to."
After a few more seconds, she said "It's easier..."
At that point I interjected, "'It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God'. That's in Matthew."
"Yes!" she said.
"So, you don't believe that's true?"
"It's not true because it's not possible."
I furrowed my brow. "You mean because it's impossible for a camel to literally go through the eye of a needle?" I asked, somewhat incredulous. She nodded.
I laughed at that. "That's a fine answer to my question," I said. I found it "fine" because this was so amusing, not because they had answered my question to my satisfaction, but because it wasn't worth dwelling on. (I don't think I even need to point out to the reader that metaphors aren't meant to be taken literally.)
"So I assume that you guys are on a mission for your church, and the mission is to bring the entire world, all of the people in it, in all countries, into one faith?" They nodded. "So, I have a question about the tower of Babel, then. Why did God scatter the languages, and all of the people in it, to different corners of the world, and then decide a few thousands years later to attempt to unify everyone?"
A beat. "He was trying to intervene in human affairs to stop people from doing something evil," they said. "It was a move that made sense at the time."
"But why would God do such a thing? If he can see the future, if he knows how events will play out, why would he do something that would so clearly become a terrible hindrance to his mission a few thousand years later? It seems to me, if nothing else, he's made things awfully difficult for you."
They offered some talking points about this that did little to redress the actual objection I was raising. The younger one pulled out her tablet and loaded an article from the Jehovah's Witnesses website, about the Tower of Babel. She offered to send it to me if I would provide an email or phone number.
"No, that's quite all right," I said. "Let me have a look at title." On reading it, I assured her that I would use Google to find that article later, after they had left. Of course, what I meant by this is that Google has in its search index all of the public pages of the Jehovah's Witnesses website, and I would use this to find that article using the title as search keywords.
"No, no," she told me. "You don't just want to go onto Google and search for this. You want the direct link to this particular site. Go to [domain redacted] and search for it on the search bar. You don't want to use Google, because who knows what kind of misinformation you'll find?"
I was tickled by this, genuinely. The little religious girl with some preposterous rubbish on a web page she wants me to read is cautioning me against the dangers of the droves of misinformation rampant on the Internet.
The discussion wrapped up shortly after this. I have to say the whole thing was fairly congenial, on both of our parts, although I would have to say this was only due to restraint on both of our parts. It's more than a little vexing to me to be reminded that there are people out there going door-to-door teaching that the human species is about 6,000 years old. On the other hand, it forces me to stop and think about what I might tell people about, if I had a legion of people at my disposal to go door-to-door peddling an idea. I suppose it would be pushing for advancement in equality between the genders, or perhaps drumming up support for public education. There is untapped power in knock and talk, I assume, especially on my own part.
But, I would say that I wasn't dealing with them with the conceit that I have had in dealing with religious people in the past. They were making their case, I considered each point, saw the flaw in it, and offered that assessment to them. I wasn't trying to persuade them I was right; I was merely challenging them to persuade me that I was wrong somehow.
Some stray thoughts about this whole process:
Almost my first words to them were "I'm not religious and do not care to be." Granted, a good salesperson does not take the initial "no" and give up. But they didn't do what a good salesperson ought to do and follow up on that remark. Why aren't I a believer? Have I ever been one? If I was and am not anymore, why? They instead proceeded forward with the prepared lecture.
Their first move was to attempt to play me a video on a tablet device. They tried this a couple other times during our conversation, as if the video could address the objection I had. I already covered this in passing above, but if you want to persuade people, you can't just dig for videos on your phone to answer your questions for you. People complain about the younger generation spending all their time watching videos online, to their own detriment; I suppose it's good news that this has, democratically, finally started to afflict those religious luddites who were slower to adopt technology in the first place.
I seemingly knew their own scripture better than they did. When scrambling for the text of the tower of Babel, I had to point out that this was Genesis Chapter 11. This seems common in my encounters with the religious; they have a message to give me, but they struggle with familiarity with even the most basic passages that I, as a non-believer, am familiar with. No one has ever asked me why I know it so well; nor have they asked why, if I know it so well, am I a non-believer?
At one point, I asked about whether their sect believed in the notion of the Trinity. (They don't.) I clarified their theological position with a question: "So, you pray to God in Jesus' name, but not to Jesus himself?" The elder one simply said "yes", but the younger one said, "Jehovah". I looked at her. There had been an unmistakeable tinge of arrogance in her voice, the way a wife might have a tone while correcting her husband for forgetting the exact date of their anniversary. "I'm sorry, does my use of the term 'God' offend you?" I asked in earnest. No, she said, she was simply clarifying. (However unnecessary it might have been, I might add, given the context.) I eyed her curiously. I haven't joined your church yet, darling; buy me a drink first.
I know that people capable of reasoning philosophically aren't drawn to faith (absolute faith doesn't corrupt the intellect absolutely, but it tends to attract the intellectually corrupted, you might say), but if you're going to go out and preach about faith, I encourage all denominations to step up their game. Send me your A-players. If you're going to claim this holy book of yours has all the answers and that it's the ultimate solution I should be adopting in every aspect of my life, then you should know your own belief system inside and out. You should not stumble over basic questions regarding its inherent contradictions. You should not be afraid to utter the words, "I do not know" in response to an unexpected query, instead of making one up or answering a different question to which you do know the answer. Do not take one step out into the world to convert non-believers until you've sorted out the basic questions in your mind. You claim you are God's elect; start exerting yourself to truly live up to this distinction.
To the latter point, I would concede that I'm perfectly capable of being persuaded by miracles. (I have a tendency to credulity, but that's not what I'm talking about.) If it could be demonstrated that any particular religious interpretation of our holy books were true, I would readily convert. What would qualify as a miracle? Certainly some astonishing event that defies the laws of nature would grab my attention, but it wouldn't even take that much. If I met a religious proselytizer who was capable of refuting my objections with reason and empiricism, without glaring fallacy, I've come to believe that this would be nothing short of a miracle.
Unrelated, but I heard a delightful riddle this afternoon: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian? A person who knocks on your door for no particular reason.
I would say there were two takeaways: one, most of what they said genuinely surprised me, and two, I was surprised at just how unprepared and unconvincing they were. (This article might be better titled, "How to Be a Better Evangelist".)
There were two women who knocked on my door, one about fifteen or twenty years older than me, and one about ten years younger than me. (I'm 36 now.) I suspect this was a master-apprentice relationship, since the elder one did almost all of the talking.
The opening was her saying they were spreading the "good news" and they asked me if they could play me a two-minute video. Both of them had tablets.
I've been in Silicon Valley for over two years now, and I still haven't gotten used to the fact that technology seems to have sunk its tendrils into every aspect of our lives, and continues to, with just about everyone cheering it on from the sidelines.
"No," I replied simply. "If you have some sort of sales pitch, let's hear from you."
I can't imagine any other domain where this approach of door-to-door recruitment would be socially acceptable. If you knock on my door attempting to sell a vacuum cleaner, for example, I'm not going to part with my hard-earned money in exchange for your contraption until you've demonstrated, with your own aptitude, a thorough knowledge and belief in the product.
They indentified themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses at this point, and I told them, quite politely, "I'm not a Christian, and really have no interest in embracing any particular denomination of the faith."
"What do you believe in, then?" they asked.
"I believe in science, scientific progress, and in the scientific method of inquiry, and the knowledge that proceeds from it," I said.
"Oh," they replied quickly, "the Bible covers science."
I shook my head at this. "I don't really think science is the purview of the Bible. Where does it talk about science?"
"In Isaiah," they said. "Here, let us pull up the verse..."
"Nope," I said. "I don't trust Christian renderings of the Hewbrew scriptures. I have a Jewish Bible, let me fetch it." I grabbed it from my shelf, brought it back to the door, and looked up the passage they quoted: Isaiah 40:22. This passage reads: "He sits enthroned above the circumference of the earth..."
At this point, you would have thought they might have taken the hint, since I had not-so-subtly reminded them that the scripture they were claiming had been appropriated from another faith. It's a thumbing of the nose, perhaps, but I remind you that I did not knock on their door.
"I don't understand," I said of the passage. "How is this science?"
"Don't you see? They predicted that the earth was round!"
I think they meant to say that the earth was a sphere, since circles are round. Even granting that, even circles have a circumference, which I didn't bother to point out. I also ignored the fact that nothing in or around the passage says anything about the earth being a sphere.
"I would say this falls under the umbrella of a stopped clock being right twice a day," I said. "It's an awful lot of words in here, so some of the things they said were bound to look correct in hindsight. And besides, that the earth is round doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would have been impossible to ascertain at the time this was written."
Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, who lived in Alexandria, computed the circumference of the earth (knowing it was a sphere) with stunning accuracy in 240 B.C., using simple geometry and light falling down two wells that were a known distance apart. Isaiah predates this by a few hundred years, and the Israelites don't quite seem like the Greeks, but I digress.
They didn't seem satisfied with this dismissal, so they pulled up the passage in their own Bibles in their own tablets. One of them held it out to me, and we read it together: "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth..." At that point, they quickly gave this one up.
"They also predicted the fall of Babylon," they said. I shrugged this off. The passage they referenced said nothing of timeframe, only that it would fall. All the civilizations in the history of the world have fallen eventually, and all of them will, much in the way that all individuals will eventually die. This cannot be counted as prophecy.
Next they offered the example of hygiene. I agreed in the affirmative, conceding that the Jewish laws of cleanliness almost certainly saved countless lives in those days. I offered the example of isolating a new born baby for eight days after it had been born, ostensibly for religious and ceremonial reasons, but pragmatically it probably kept their young immune systems from contracting a wealth of diseases.
I said this to them as a friendly concession, to let them know that I was open to what they were saying, but inwardly, having a different discourse. Getting back to the Babylon, let's take one example: we have writings from their cuneiform tablets that prescribe that a person eat a slice of liver if they are afflicted with "night blindness". Today we know that night blindness is caused by a deficiency in Vitamin A, which livers are rich in. While the medicinal practices of the Babylonians were far from what we know today, many of their folk remedies worked quite well, and would still work even today. It's only because of modern medicine that we know why, and the why is the critical element of this understanding.
"But," I said, getting back to the Jewish laws of hygeine, "this doesn't seem like something that even a primitive people would be incapable of figuring out for themselves, without the help of a divine power." For people who don't believe we evolved from apes, religious people don't seem to give our distant ancestors a whole lot of credit.
At this point, they seemed at a loss, so I asked them how old they thought the earth was. Namely, I asked if their viewpoint was that of the "young-earth creationists".
"Oh no!" they reassured me. "The earth is quite old. Very old. Millions...of years...at least. But we don't know how old it really is."
4.6 billion years, by current estimates. I held my tongue.
"How long do you think human beings have existed on the planet?" I asked. There's an incompatibility here; I'm digging for it.
"Oh, we believe in the story of Adam and Eve, so about 6,000 years," they said.
"So, scientists believe that all human beings on the planet descended from a small tribe of hunter-gatherers that migrated out of Africa 50,000 years ago. You would claim that they're wrong about this?"
The elder one nodded solemnly at me. There was more than a hint of pity in her eyes.
"So," I went on, "you believe that everything in Bible is meant to be taken as literal truth?"
"Oh no!" they reassured me. "Not all of that stuff can be true, of course. We don't believe all of it."
"So you don't believe in the flood?" I asked. Nope, they do. "The tower of Babel?" Yep, they believe that one. "The exodus?" Hook, line, and sinker.
"So what don't you think is literally true in the Bible?" I asked, not wanting to continue enumerating all the possibilities.
"Well", said the younger one, speaking up for almost the first time, "Jesus teaches us something that isn't literally true. It's something about a needle..." She trailed off, digging in her memory banks for it. "Ah, I can't remember," she said, giving up after several seconds of silence.
"No, no," I insisted. "Now I'm curious about what you're referring to."
After a few more seconds, she said "It's easier..."
At that point I interjected, "'It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God'. That's in Matthew."
"Yes!" she said.
"So, you don't believe that's true?"
"It's not true because it's not possible."
I furrowed my brow. "You mean because it's impossible for a camel to literally go through the eye of a needle?" I asked, somewhat incredulous. She nodded.
I laughed at that. "That's a fine answer to my question," I said. I found it "fine" because this was so amusing, not because they had answered my question to my satisfaction, but because it wasn't worth dwelling on. (I don't think I even need to point out to the reader that metaphors aren't meant to be taken literally.)
"So I assume that you guys are on a mission for your church, and the mission is to bring the entire world, all of the people in it, in all countries, into one faith?" They nodded. "So, I have a question about the tower of Babel, then. Why did God scatter the languages, and all of the people in it, to different corners of the world, and then decide a few thousands years later to attempt to unify everyone?"
A beat. "He was trying to intervene in human affairs to stop people from doing something evil," they said. "It was a move that made sense at the time."
"But why would God do such a thing? If he can see the future, if he knows how events will play out, why would he do something that would so clearly become a terrible hindrance to his mission a few thousand years later? It seems to me, if nothing else, he's made things awfully difficult for you."
They offered some talking points about this that did little to redress the actual objection I was raising. The younger one pulled out her tablet and loaded an article from the Jehovah's Witnesses website, about the Tower of Babel. She offered to send it to me if I would provide an email or phone number.
"No, that's quite all right," I said. "Let me have a look at title." On reading it, I assured her that I would use Google to find that article later, after they had left. Of course, what I meant by this is that Google has in its search index all of the public pages of the Jehovah's Witnesses website, and I would use this to find that article using the title as search keywords.
"No, no," she told me. "You don't just want to go onto Google and search for this. You want the direct link to this particular site. Go to [domain redacted] and search for it on the search bar. You don't want to use Google, because who knows what kind of misinformation you'll find?"
I was tickled by this, genuinely. The little religious girl with some preposterous rubbish on a web page she wants me to read is cautioning me against the dangers of the droves of misinformation rampant on the Internet.
The discussion wrapped up shortly after this. I have to say the whole thing was fairly congenial, on both of our parts, although I would have to say this was only due to restraint on both of our parts. It's more than a little vexing to me to be reminded that there are people out there going door-to-door teaching that the human species is about 6,000 years old. On the other hand, it forces me to stop and think about what I might tell people about, if I had a legion of people at my disposal to go door-to-door peddling an idea. I suppose it would be pushing for advancement in equality between the genders, or perhaps drumming up support for public education. There is untapped power in knock and talk, I assume, especially on my own part.
But, I would say that I wasn't dealing with them with the conceit that I have had in dealing with religious people in the past. They were making their case, I considered each point, saw the flaw in it, and offered that assessment to them. I wasn't trying to persuade them I was right; I was merely challenging them to persuade me that I was wrong somehow.
Some stray thoughts about this whole process:
Almost my first words to them were "I'm not religious and do not care to be." Granted, a good salesperson does not take the initial "no" and give up. But they didn't do what a good salesperson ought to do and follow up on that remark. Why aren't I a believer? Have I ever been one? If I was and am not anymore, why? They instead proceeded forward with the prepared lecture.
Their first move was to attempt to play me a video on a tablet device. They tried this a couple other times during our conversation, as if the video could address the objection I had. I already covered this in passing above, but if you want to persuade people, you can't just dig for videos on your phone to answer your questions for you. People complain about the younger generation spending all their time watching videos online, to their own detriment; I suppose it's good news that this has, democratically, finally started to afflict those religious luddites who were slower to adopt technology in the first place.
I seemingly knew their own scripture better than they did. When scrambling for the text of the tower of Babel, I had to point out that this was Genesis Chapter 11. This seems common in my encounters with the religious; they have a message to give me, but they struggle with familiarity with even the most basic passages that I, as a non-believer, am familiar with. No one has ever asked me why I know it so well; nor have they asked why, if I know it so well, am I a non-believer?
At one point, I asked about whether their sect believed in the notion of the Trinity. (They don't.) I clarified their theological position with a question: "So, you pray to God in Jesus' name, but not to Jesus himself?" The elder one simply said "yes", but the younger one said, "Jehovah". I looked at her. There had been an unmistakeable tinge of arrogance in her voice, the way a wife might have a tone while correcting her husband for forgetting the exact date of their anniversary. "I'm sorry, does my use of the term 'God' offend you?" I asked in earnest. No, she said, she was simply clarifying. (However unnecessary it might have been, I might add, given the context.) I eyed her curiously. I haven't joined your church yet, darling; buy me a drink first.
I know that people capable of reasoning philosophically aren't drawn to faith (absolute faith doesn't corrupt the intellect absolutely, but it tends to attract the intellectually corrupted, you might say), but if you're going to go out and preach about faith, I encourage all denominations to step up their game. Send me your A-players. If you're going to claim this holy book of yours has all the answers and that it's the ultimate solution I should be adopting in every aspect of my life, then you should know your own belief system inside and out. You should not stumble over basic questions regarding its inherent contradictions. You should not be afraid to utter the words, "I do not know" in response to an unexpected query, instead of making one up or answering a different question to which you do know the answer. Do not take one step out into the world to convert non-believers until you've sorted out the basic questions in your mind. You claim you are God's elect; start exerting yourself to truly live up to this distinction.
To the latter point, I would concede that I'm perfectly capable of being persuaded by miracles. (I have a tendency to credulity, but that's not what I'm talking about.) If it could be demonstrated that any particular religious interpretation of our holy books were true, I would readily convert. What would qualify as a miracle? Certainly some astonishing event that defies the laws of nature would grab my attention, but it wouldn't even take that much. If I met a religious proselytizer who was capable of refuting my objections with reason and empiricism, without glaring fallacy, I've come to believe that this would be nothing short of a miracle.
Unrelated, but I heard a delightful riddle this afternoon: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian? A person who knocks on your door for no particular reason.