When the Jehovah’s Witnesses came over…

So there I was, stark bollock naked, having just had a shower. Not probably what you were expecting from this post, for sure. The door bell rang, and my partner answered. I kept half an ear open, intrigued as to who it might be. I heard words like “…my partner upstairs…” and “…you might want to talk to him…” from my partner, as well as things like “…creation…God…” from a couple of voices.

“Holy mother of God! I’d better get my ass downstairs! The J-Dubs are in town!” I thought to myself. And charged downstairs, looking like an ineptly-dressed shambles.

I was excited, genuinely excited. My blood pressure and heart beat were through the roof. I could barely contain myself.

Most men get like this in the throes of sexual unison, or on seeing a beautiful woman. Not me. Geek to the bone. I was hankering, not for hot sex (though my clothing may have stated otherwise), but for a hot debate. About God.

So I was confronted with a middle-aged man and a younger guy holding out their issues of the Watchtower – that beacon of rational enlightenment.

“Hi there, we’re-”

“I’ve been wanting to speak to you guys for AGES. You see, I’m an atheist philosopher and author and…”

Cue a rather protracted rant about, well, everything. Evolution was pretty fun. They had nothing to answer for every single one of my points (yes, including endogenous retroviruses) apart from deferring to an article on Creation in their beloved magazine. They were nice enough people. The older guy wasn’t quite as sharp or knowledgeable on anything as the younger guy, but it was still clear that they weren’t really justified in holding to their beliefs, and certainly not in knocking on people’s doors and trying to convince them that THEY were erring in their beliefs.

So we chatted for some time. I showed them my books, and gave them a business card, and treated the whole thing like a reverse conversion attempt, an atheistic proselytism. It certainly wasn’t what they were expecting. On literally every point that they had, I had a counterpoint.

So, readers, let me know of YOUR Jehovah’s Witness stories. Tell me of what you talked about, and what effect it had on them.

[Random reminder – I’m on twitter – please follow me – @ATipplingPhilo]