Sunday Scribblings: I Believe

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. No characters are based on real people, whether living or dead. Any resemblance to a real person is pure coincidence.

A co-worker and I had talked about having drinks to have all those conversations we told each other we should eventually have. It was a few weeks after Christmas. A Friday night. Mild enough for mid-January. A light rain falling. We walked to a small hole-in-the-wall bar on 2nd avenue.

I had never seen this friend outside of the office. I knew he was married. That he enjoyed the outdoors, especially biking and hiking around Seattle. That he was indifferent about his position at work. And that he considered himself an atheist.

The bar's interior, poorly lit, reminded me of a stormy night with its dim maroon glow and turbulent noise. Not loud, per se, but turbulent with the muttering of dissatisfied middle managers who had enough to spend on a watered down eight dollar fru-fru drink.

I and my friend stuck with pitchers of beer. An amber ale. Enhanced by the red glow. I poured.

There ensued a natural silence. The awkwardness of seeing a person I thought I knew well in a new situation and circumstance. We started where I'd imagine most of those types of conversation begin. On some topic we both shared in common. Work. Gossip and the like. Innocuous stuff. Inconsequential.

After we had both finished our second glasses, I proactively begged pardon and asked a question about which I was unspeakably curious.

'Why are you an atheist?'

I blurted it out, having never met a self-proclaimed atheist before. Having spent three years in a Roman Catholic seminary, I just couldn't understand the concept.

With tongue in cheek, he asked, 'Why are you a Catholic?'

Having been in the seminary, I had the answer. What I thought to be a rather intelligent answer, at that. 'I was originally Catholic because I was born into it. My parents and grandparents taught me to believe in the Trinity. Then, I went to seminary and struggled mightily with my faith. But in the end, even though I subsequently left the seminary, I determined that Blaise Pascal put forth the best reason to believe in God.'

'And what's that?' my friend asked.

'The jist is that people should act like God exists because if he does and you abide by His rules, you're all good. And if he doesn't, then you've lived a good life anyway and thus there's no loss.'

'Interesting justification.'

'So, now you. Why don't you believe in anything?'

'What?'

'You know, why are you an atheist?'

'Those aren't synonymous,' he said. 'I'm an atheist; I believe in things.'

'Yeah, okay,' I responded thinking he was joking with me.

'I don't believe in God. Disbelief in God is as much a belief as your belief in God is.'

'Uh, okay. Well, then how can you justify to yourself that God doesn't exist?'

'Prove he does,' he replied.

'Prove he doesn't,' I shot back.

'Exactly.'

'Huh?'

'What the hell do they teach you in the seminary?' He chuckled. 'I have chosen not to belief after a long and hard struggle with faith. I don't believe in any of the institutional crap they call religion. And I certainly don't believe in all the mumbo jumbo about some omnipotent being getting mad and zapping us with lightning. Or sending his son who happens to be human but also God to earth to save us and not really saving a damn thing. He was just a guy who got himself killed. And what's more is I have the right to believe what I believe.'

'I don't deny your rights as guaranteed by the government, but what if you're wrong?'

He smiled widely. 'If I'm wrong, at least I'll live in eternal damnation knowing that I was more courageous than most to take - as Robert Frost said - the road less traveled.'

I smiled back at him. 'Yeah, and in the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld, sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.'

As has most of our religious conversations since that first one, it ended in a draw. And in each of us attempting to persuade the other all the more.

Funny how faith works...