The more I learn about my newest coworkers, the more disturbed I am.
Two guys have been hired here since January and both belong to Christian religions. That in and of itself is fine. But both, one more than the other, are very hard core. The first one of the two that was hired, Pete, is very, very fire-and-brimstone, Wanna hear my testimony? Christian. And as you might expect very right-wing politically. Last week I rode with him a few times in his car. When he began talking about some of his beliefs I was stunned; I had never had a conversation with somebody this devout. He is a Creationist, first of all (yes he believes the Earth is less than 10,000 years old). It always amazes me how people can believe that. Maybe it shouldn't but it does. Also he talked about how this guy he knew came out of the closet and he was despondent that now he knew the guy was going to Hell. Oh geez. "Did he have to go there?" I thought. All the arguments against homosexuality being immoral came rushing to the front of my brain in a fury but I held them at bay. I knew that it would be pointless with Pete. All I did was half-heartedly mention that Jesus saved everybody from their sins, not just straight people. That's probably the best approach with somebody so devoutly Christian. He just kinda went "Welllll, yeeaaahhhh...."
What amazed me the most, though, is when he began talking about how weird it was that you can see certain elements of the Bible represented in modern day society (probably his point is how often the Bible is proved to be true). He actually said, get this, that the after-effects of Eve tricking Adam into eating the apple can be seen, for example, in his wife, and how he catches her often trying to manipulate him. "Oh he didn't just say that did he?!" I thought. This floored me. I did not realize that even the most devout still believed this archaic sexist garbage. His wife does seem to treat him like a child (she is much older). All I responded with was that men can be manipulative, too, something he couldn't disagree with.
This guy is young, one of the youngest here now, and has a lot of life yet to live. Maybe while he ages and picks up wisdom he will see how offensive these views are. Maybe.
The newest guy here, Matt, we found out when he announced that on no uncertain terms would we be doing anything for his birthday, is Jehovah's Witness. I've always had quite a low opinion of the religion (who doesn't want to celebrate holidays for crying out loud?!) but I decided to do some reading up on it, thinking maybe it wasn't all bad. I'm sorry, this will be highly offensive to any Witnesses and I hope none are reading this (including Matt) but the more I read about it, the more retarded I realized this sect of Christianity is. Let me put it this way, if you knew a guy who lied all the time, made confident predictions about things that consistently were flat-out wrong, would you believe anything he says over time? Would you have any respect for him or faith in him? Many times in the history of this religion they predicted that Armageddon would happen in a specific year. When those years passed they chose new years. Finally in the mid-70's they gave up and said "Well, it's gonna happen SOMETIME in the near future." I don't care what else this religion is about, this alone should erode its overall credibility. Nobody should believe anything this religion says about anything. How can people who convert be so gullible? I'll give people like Matt a pass who have been forced to adhere to this religion all their lives by their parents and brainwashed into thinking it is awesome but anybody who converts in their adult life is... well let's just be polite and say "misguided."
But Matt doesn't try to preach and hasn't been caught saying asinine things, at least in front of me. What's most disturbing about him is that recently he told us that up until about fifty years ago his family killed any babies born with disabilities. WHAT??! Yeah, his grandfather helped kill his blind sister shortly after her birth. Well, his family did come from Germany, Nazi Germany at one point. So maybe it makes a certain amount of sense. But still, how incredbily crrepy.
I'm beginning to feel almost like an odd man out here. There's one guy here who is staunchly anti-religious and never fails to point out all the crappy things religion is responsible for throughout history. And there's an extremely left-leaning agnostic here. And the Japanese guy doesn't belong to any religion. But other than those three everybody here is in a religion and pretty devout. One guy is Catholic. There are two who I guess are Baptist (they can't drink). Another guy is Mormon. Oh and he's Jewish, too. And no, I have no idea. I think my boss is Catholic, too, but I'm not sure. He doesn't talk about religion much. But I am willing to bet that the majority of the guys here (and the one girl) would not want to hear my views on religion. I might want to try to keep my mouth shut.
I hope they never read this and figure out it is me. Maybe I should delete this later, or rewrite it into a completely different subject at some point.