1: "Hey, man. You smoking tonight?"
2: "I probably won't be. Possibly tomorrow, or Saturday."
1: "Okay. Let me know! I want to get in on this conversation that I missed last time!"
2: "Wait. Which conversation?"
1: "Oh. Vince told me that I came up in conversation last time you guys smoked."
2: "Who? Oh, that guy. Yeah, we were talking about God, and about how there is no such thing as a real atheist and I brought you up as an example of someone who went through atheism and came out a Christian. 99% of the conversation we have while smoking at the church is about God."
1: "You smoke at a church!? That's hilarious."
2: "Yep. It's a perfect spot, and I think it fits well. It's a safe place, we chill, talk about God, and get high. It doesn't get much better than that."
1: "Sure, sure. I don't specifically remember ever saying I was an atheist, though... More like a philosophical anarchist, in the loosest meaning."
2: "You were very anti-Christian - to say the least - a few weeks ago."
1: "Nope. I wasn't anti-Christian, then."
2: "No?"
1: "No. I've had and still have Christian friends that were and are very dear to me."
2: "Well, I meant anti-Christian in the philosophical sense, not that you hated the people themselves." (Trail off, embarrassed-ish)
1: "There are large differences between one's struggles with faith, one's skirmishes with the faithful, and one's battles with the people who use their faith as a weapon. I've always had battles with faith, and I always will."
2: "That's just part of it. I battle with God all the time!"
1: "I argue points, not positions. When I see a poor argument made, regardless of the position it is for or against, I address it."
2: "Same here, most of the time."
1: "So I wasn't anti-Christian, I was just addressing a poorly made argument. No hard feelings, no personal vendettas, nothing like that at all."
2: "I don't know, man. Some of the stuff you said to me sounded really anti-Christian."
1: "Well, you are a Christian, and when you are attached to a view to the degree you are commanded to be, it's very hard to differentiate a philosophical argument from a personal attack. I don't blame you."
2: "But you said you hated God."
1: "Again, there's a distinction between my battles with faith and my battles with the faithful."
2: "True."
1: "Question. Does someone mean the Christian god everytime they say the word 'God?'"
2: "Not all the time. These days, they don't even mean God when they say it. It seems to be a curse word to most people."
1: "So the word has different meanings?"
2: "Sure. That should be obvious."
1: "Should be. Philosophy doesn't run on shoulds, though. People call whatever the hell they want to God, whether God is a tolerant, everloving hippy or a judgemental overlord hellbent on the destruction of the human spirit. It's what simultaneously gives the name of God power and precludes it, making it meaningless; saltless. People tend to project their own qualities into Christianity's teachings, and call that God."
2: (...)
1: "Just because I know the right words to say does not mean that I believe them. I might have been lying when I said I hated God three weeks ago just as easily as I might have been lying when I said I believed in God three days ago. Ignorance is bliss, because it prevents second guessing. The point is: my beliefs don't get pinned down. Maybe everything I've ever written is a testament to how manipulable religion really is."
2: "Or how sinful our hearts are."
1: (Half acknowledges, but continues.) "Everytime I put something out, part of me cries, and part of me dies. But part of me giggles incessantly, saying 'I can't believe they're buying this shit!' But as for what you said, if sin is defined as 'going against God's will,' or 'what is displeasing to God,' then it's just as vague and manipulable as the concept of God is. In other words, only someone with an agenda of destruction and division uses the word "sin," specifically. There are other words that mean similar things that do far less to divide or alienate people."
2: "If we erase the word 'sin' from our vocabulary, we erase the purpose of Christ, and our identities."
1: (Increasingly sarcastic) "Is that so? Well, maybe. I guess the red letters don't mean much anyway."
2: (Ignores it.) "Yes. One of the first things we hear about Jesus (named Immanuel) in the Bible is that he will be named named Immanuel - God with Us - for he will save his people from their sins. If there is no sin, what did he come here for?"
1: "If I said that Jesus had come to save me from my Izfump, and there happened to be a book that mentioned Izfump, and I said that you were going to hell because of your Izfump, would you say that there is such thing as Izfump, or is it just a meaningless term I like to throw around when I want to condemn someone different than me? Personally, I think if Jesus existed, Matthew 5-7 is a good indication of his primary purpose."
2: "The spelling or pronunciation of a word is arbitrary. It is what the word represents in reality that is important. The wages of sin is death, whether it's called izfump or fun. The fact is we are already condemned that is the purpose of Christ anyway, to take that punishment we deserve. There is no life in the law of God, it is a means of condemnation and death to everything that is sinful and evil. The word God is something we've made in English; in the Bible, the names of God have very specific meanings."
1: "Actually, that's extremely irrelevant to the conversation."
2: "How so? Look at the name Yahweh, it means: I AM. Moses asked God how what to tell the people that God was called and he told him to say that I AM sent him. I think it is a great example of the specificity that language can have."
1: (Somewhat exasperated, and quickly spoken.) "The point is that the words themselves don't mean anything without the transcendental relationship that exists between a word and the object or concept that the word signifies. A dog is not the word 'dog.' So when people use words like 'God,' 'sin,' 'evil,' et cetera, there's really no objective reason to even suggest that they have a grasp on them, because a word is much closer to how it's used than what it represents. That's what simultaneously makes the words powerful in an "oh-my-god-my-head's-a-gun" sense, but also makes them completely meaningless and inaccessible on an objective level. Which leaves subjectivity, which precludes the possibility of absolute truth that you're trying to claim."
2: "Well, the same would go for your very argument and every drop of reasoning in language. If you held to that view it would be impossible to make any affirmative statements."
1: "Not really. I mean, maybe it would, but I'm not exactly giving everyone an ultimatum of "turn or burn," or insisting that my personal beliefs are the final arbiter of absolute truth, which is apparently required of any Christian. But that being said, those words are used to describe the metaphysical, which is something inherently intangible in the world we know. It doesn't invalidate language so much as it invalidates religious vernacular."
2: "I don't think that fallibility of subjective perception is a basis for denying objective truth. Hence, you cannot deny sin or God, because our perception sucks. Those things are objective."
1: "But you also cannot define them, which makes them meaningless."
2: "But if they exist, they define themselves."
1: "If they do, sure. But given what you said, it's not really possible for us to know that, is it? Our perception sucks, remember?"
2: (Slowly opens his mouth to speak.)
1: "Contradiction approaching."
2: (Pause; indignant) "I think it is! Let me try to explain."
1: Try away. But you'll fail, unless you are omniscient or omnipresent. You must become a God in order to define one, by the simple nature of what we say the word "God" signifies. But there is a difference between becoming a God, and becoming a God in mind. Most people never see that difference and never make that distinction. The truth is, it takes an impossibly large amount of pride to be able to make an affirmative statement about God's existence."
2: (Texting the entire time.) "In John 6:63, Jesus says, 'It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh counts for nothing, the words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life." If that is true, and Jeremiah 24:7 is true, then spiritual discernment by the Holy Spirit is the basis upon which we can say with 100% certainty--" ("...that God is who he says he is.")
1: "Circular reasoning. A four year old autistic child sitting in on the first week of Philosophy 101 would pick that up. Again, "Holy Spirit?" Worrrrddss! Man, just say God is subjective and get it over with. I've disproven you. I love you man, but you're embarrassing yourself."
2: (Cell phone rings, very suspiciously. The ringtone is the SlapChop remix!) "Oh, I've gotta take this call! I should really get going. It was good talking to you!" (Leaves.)