jamesq | On When To Have Arguments (Reply)

dark_christian poked a memory I hadn't accessed in a long time.

Back when I was still working at Office Depot, the guy who was the head of the computer department was an Evangelical (We'll call him Kurt, because that's not quite his name). Normally this didn't affect the work environment, but every now and then something would set him off. Generally it was talk about the validity of religion. I think at the time I had just been dumped by a girl who worked at the store and I was whining about it. He tried to cheer me up by giving some dating advice. If you had ever met Kurt, you'd know he wasn't the guy to be giving advice on how to pick up women.

"You know where the best place to meet women is? Church!"
"Even if that's true, I'm not going to go to church under false pretenses. For one thing, it's dishonest and for another I'm not religious."

And wouldn't that make great pillow talk later in the relationship? I'm so glad we finally consummated our relationship - by the way, your religion is a lie. I'd be a Grade-A cad.

Anyway, Kurt was surprised by my assertion that I wasn't religious (I didn't flat out state I was an atheist at his point).

"Oh it's all right if you're not religious. I don't believe in religion."
"If you don't believe in religion, what are you doing going to church then?"
"I don't believe in religion - I believe in Truth."
"What?"
"A religion is a false belief. My church isn't a religion, it's the truth."
"That's ridiculous, All religions, including yours, think they're the One True Faith. But nobody honestly has any proof of that."
"I can prove it - I've never lost a debate on God."

At this point I realized that Kurt was impervious to logic and debating him - especially debating him and possibly getting into a shouting match in the middle of the computer aisle at work - was not a thing I cared to do.

"You know what Kurt, I'm not going to discuss religion with you at work."
"I can debate you. I can prove it all to you."
"Kurt. I am not going to discuss religion with you at work."
"Seriously, I know I'll win this argument."
"I. Am. Not. Discussing. Religion. At. Work."

He tried again a few times over the next week, always with me cutting him off. Too bad really, I was willing to have this discussion with him, just not at work. Hell, buy me a coke at the bar and I'd have had a grand old time arguing with him. It would have been interesting because I hadn't refined many of my arguments yet. Things like standards of proof and why circular reasoning is a bad thing were all still things I understood internally but hadn't really articulated properly. It was all still rough draft.

Kurt got fired. Not sure why since he was decent at selling computers. I give the impression of Kurt being a wacky evangelical, but aside from this one occurrence he really did keep it separate from work.