A few days ago I went out to dinner with a religious friend, who I knew wanted to talk religion and more specifically about why I’m an atheist. There was a time when conversations like that focused on how and why I lost my faith, but at least for the last couple of years I know better to let it stay there long.

It took me almost five years to make the transition from firm theist to agnostic theist to deist to atheist and in the nearly five years* since then the reasons I rejected Christianity specifically and belief in a deity in general have become irrelevant and supplanted with other objections to faith.

It was interesting to let him field one argument for religion after another and simply explain why that’s not convincing. Of course we reached the final last ditch effort that Christians always seem to default to, “you just have to have faith”. I’ve heard it plenty of times before and that is the one where I still respond based on my experience of losing my faith. I wanted to believe, I tried to believe, I begged God for faith, but I was simply unable to be believe. If I couldn’t believe when I wanted to, then how the hell am I going to “just have faith” now?

In what was supposed to be the end of that, we agreed that we were at an impasse (I wasn’t expecting anything different), but he still expressed a hope that I would come around. I told him that when it comes down to it, I don’t care what he believes as long as it makes him happy and he doesn’t try to force it on others through the government.

He assured me that I have nothing to worry about there, so considering he lives in Washington, I asked him where he stood on Referendum 74…