About a week ago, I was waiting at a bus stop on my way home, and I was approached by a pair of Mormons going about their rounds. They stopped to chat, as is their wont, and the one, taller Mormon acknowledged my E Pluribus Anus shirt that I was sporting at the time.

This is the only picture of me where the logo is reasonably visible, and I’m not taking a fucking selfie for my dumb blog.

This is a reference to the television show Community for those godless heathens among you who don’t know your anus references, as seen in the school’s logo.

It translates to, “From Many Buttholes.” Very poetic.

Now, to me, this was great because it meant I got to talk about buttholes with Mormons, which has been my dream since childhood. I mean, we talked about other things like where they were from and boring social stuff, but whatever. The point is we shared a pleasant conversation. Meanwhile the bus pulls up, and they ask me if I would want to meet up with them later for a gathering, and I said, “No, I’m not interested, thank you, but it was nice chatting with you!” and got on the bus. As we parted ways, the one Mormon shouted after me, “Pop POP!” It was a magical moment.

As I got on the bus and displayed my pass, the bus driver said to me, “I saved you, huh?” as if I had just barely survived a shark attack, and he had pulled me from the water. Thing is, he hadn’t. The Mormons were kind and polite, and I was perfectly content having an idle conversation with them, and the bus driver did not commit any extra effort to rescue me from the uncomfortable situation he believed me to be in, he was just doing his job. If anyone was legitimately trying to save me, it was the Mormons.

A lot of people loathe door-to-door evangelists, and I get it. That used to be me. I would relish the occasion where one day I would finally get to ask a silly religious person why God would have created a universe wherein He would have to wait billions of years for His creation to come about if He allegedly loves us so much, or if the Earth is only 6000 years old, how does that explain the entirety of science? I mean, I love popcorn but I gotta admit, two minutes is about the extent I’m willing to wait. Compared to billions of years? Nobody loves popcorn that much. Alternatively, if I just came across a bowl of popcorn in the street and assumed that’s where popcorn came from, then I’d be stupid. I call it: The Popcorn Argument.

Eventually I learned that purpose, hope, and community are super important and hey! Turns out religion offers all those things. Now I’m the atheist who writes blogs defending organized religion. Go figure. These days when I’m given the opportunity to demand an explanation for the problem of evil, I prefer just being pleasant with another human being. Honestly, I’m probably better off.

Now, I didn’t write this blog just to tell you about my dabblings with theology. What I wanted to do was help out a reader or two come to grips with evangelist behaviour because it gets a lot of flack, and I don’t really think it deserves it. So come with me on a thought-experiment journey to a magical land where money dictates the turning of the world… which is actually this world. I guess you didn’t have to journey that far.

Imagine you won the lottery. Not like a free scratch or ten bucks, but the real jackpot. Huzzah, right?! And I’m not even talking about double-digit millions of dollars here, I’m talking infinite dollars. Literally an unending supply of dollars. Pay off your bills, take a trip to Hawaii, buy that happiness everyone keeps talking about… you will never have to have a financial worry again in your life! Now we’ll have to stretch our imaginations here a little bit and pretend you’re not a selfish piece of shit. You realize that with infinite dollars, you could pay off the bills of everyone! Pay off their mortgages; fund their kids’ tuition; pay for their health insurance! With an infinite amount of dollars, you could pass on infinite dollars to everyone! It’s one of the perks of infinite! So you go door to door, and you’re like, “Hey friend! I was that person who won that crazy jackpot that defies the laws of economic inflation! Want to have all your financial troubles taken care of forever?” Sane people would say yes. Suddenly, you realize that you’ve stumbled into a weird hippy commune! They reject your currency because they’re content with their bartering system of beads and hemp! They say things like, “Don’t you know that your money is fake? What real value has a piece of paper outside of what society collectively attributes to it? NOTHING! You believe in a lie!” The crazy fools, don’t they see the glory that is monetary-based capitalism? Monetary-based capitalism within which, as infinite-aires, they can live out the rest of their hippy lives in abundance and luxury? Lunacy!

So as a person with access to the infinite who is seeking to share its benefits for the good of everyone, do you feel like you’re worthy of scorn from smelly hippies? No, of course not. You’re only trying to help! The difference lies in each group’s perspective as to what generates worth, be it the agreed upon social value of a piece of paper (or more so nowadays the value of a few pixels on a screen), or, to bring back our titular Mormons, the value of an invisible deity. Each person is going to have a different view, but if we realize that unless we are selfish pieces of shit, we would perform the exact evangelistic deeds if we had access to an infinite portion of something we find so valuable.