My office in the university is in a central location, at the intersection of two main streets that cut through the campus. If I look outside my window, I have a good chance of seeing most of the university community passing by during any given day. As a result, the street corner outside my office is a popular place for people who want to hand out religious tracts.

In days gone by, when approached by such people I would politely decline their offers and walk away. But now, if I am not in a hurry to go somewhere, I take the opportunity to question them about their beliefs. I take the Socratic approach of asking questions and then build on their responses by asking more questions, which I find leads to far more interesting discussions than trying to simply prove to them that they are wrong. (For my previous encounters with Jesus people, see here, here, and here. It’s all good clean fun.)

This happened again a few weeks ago, when a genial man about my age approached me at the intersection and asked me if I wanted to go to heaven. He was wearing a shirt that said, “Heaven is kosher” and handing out a small tract that had the picture of a ticket stub with “Your ticket to heaven” written in large letters. Inside it had the usual religious boilerplate about how Jesus died so that we could be saved, etc. It seemed to be produced by one of those groups that can be classified either under the “Jews for Jesus” umbrella or of those Christians who think the fortunes of Israel are closely tied to the second coming.

I began the questioning process by asking him why he believed heaven existed and then following up with further questions requiring him to justify each response. In the ensuing conversation he said that he believed in heaven because the Bible said so, believed what was in the Bible because it was the word of god, believed in god because the Bible said so, and believed the Bible was true because the Bible said that what was in it was true because it was the word of god. Of course, it was not hard to point out that this was complete circular in its reasoning and that according to that logic he should believe in the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and the Bhagavad Gita as well, since they all claim to be the word of their respective gods.

Even he realized that he needed to find a way out of that circle and I could predict what would happen next and it did. When Jesus people find themselves in a logical trap, they simply start to make stuff up. This man said that he believed that only the Bible was true because god told him so. On further questioning he said that god spoke regularly to him, in English. I asked him if anyone else was around to hear the voice so that he would know it was real and not simply in his head and he said that his wife heard it too.

I asked him if he had made any recordings of god’s voice speaking to him. He was obviously unprepared for that question and you can understand why. Religious people can quite casually say that god told them this or that and no one asks them the details of exactly what was said and whether anyone else heard it. I have lost count of the number of politicians who say that god told them to run for office or to take some action and no one thinks to press them on the details of that experience. This is why the new atheists are ruffling feathers. They are breaking that taboo, the tacit agreement that has existed for so long that when people make claims about god, those claims must not be challenged.

My genial proselytizer, thinking quickly, said that he did not record god’s voice because he did not have a voice recorder, but he laughed as he said it since he knew that it was such a weak excuse since nowadays, even cell phones are capable of voice and video recording. I told him that the next time he should really record god speaking to him because that would be big news and he would not have to waste time handing tracts on street corners since we would all be able to hear the voice of god directly.

What was most interesting was what happened at the end, just before a heavy downpour caused us to scatter. He asked me if I believed in god (the answer should have been obvious by then) and I said of course not. He asked what I did at the university and I said I was a scientist. A light seemed to dawn on him and he said, “Oh, a scientist. No wonder you don’t believe in god.”

His reaction was interesting and encouraging. It shows that the idea that science and belief in god are incompatible, which is what new atheists say, is becoming commonplace. Accommodationists tend to fear that if people are forced to choose between science and belief in god, they will choose the latter. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report How the Public Resolves Conflicts Between Faith and Science: seems to provide some support for this view, quoting a October 2006 Time magazine poll that said that “When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding.”

But I am not so sure. This is what they say but it is science that gives them all of their modern life and they know it. The progress of knowledge has always involved people challenging established beliefs with new ideas that are often initially rejected but, if correct, eventually get accepted. The only way forward is to keep pointing out what is true, not pre-emptively caving in for fear of being rejected.

The science genie is out of the bottle and nothing will put it back. Modernity and science are irreversible juggernauts. If religion is seen as contradicting science, it will undoubtedly suffer and we lose nothing by telling people that this is the choice they face.