A JW, who is convinced that he’s one of the 144,000 or whatever number it is. Don’t ask me how he can be, that door closed long ago. But you know that with any cult based religion you change the rules as it suits.

Anyway someone who didn’t know his fervor tried to ambush him with, starting with creationism. Trouble is that it quickly got to the big bang, and according to JW guy that was completely and utterly in line with doctrine, the un-causable cause.

Just because we can’t grasp the nothingness before creation, and this is his quote, “much like we can’t graph infinity”, then the obvious answer is a creator.

Obviously.

Not to be beaten the ambusher soldiered on, let’s try evolution again;

to which we get from  JW guy creationist nonsense about “you never see a simpler thing evolve into a more complex thing” and “why don’t dogs give birth to cats”, but he seems to have given ground in the years I’ve known him to “intelligent design” by which he means that creator made things that have adapted.

Not evolution since man did not evolve from a monkey, but that creator gives them a nudge now and then

“How about” says ambusher “Contradictions in the Bible“. I hung my head

“Show me one” says JW guy. It was like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Of course there are many and varied inconsistencies and contradictions, I know from reading and research that there are, but I can’t quote chapter and verse. If I was really fired up about the dumbness of religion and people’s faith I possibly would be, but each to their own. If you believe the bible in toto then you do, it’s not a negotiation. Besides which bible thumpers tend to be very picky about which words from which verse and in which context they use scripture, it’s not a whole story, it’s a soundbite.

There is no winning any argument about faith and belief, neither party is going to change their mind, as if over a coffee you’re going to have an epiphany or something.

But I’ve done my thinking and yes there was nothing and then there was something. Yes perhaps we can’t grasp the nothing, and because we are material we can only construct largely what we are familiar with, that which we know. There is stuff, it came from somewhere, there can’t have been no stuff, and suddenly then stuff, that would be silly, we don’t have experience of that happening. But to then go “ah God did it” is even lamer than just shrugging shoulders and going “it is what it is”

Finally we finished coffee with JW guy saying “what if you are wrong, what do you think will happen when you die” I said “worm meat”. I wasn’t really helping either cause.