There Is No God And We Are His Prophets

Pen in mouth, hair frazzled, short and brown, she sat at the tall black table, tapping quickly on her keyboard.  Encircled by open notebooks, text books, loose sheets of paper and an ipod with wires leading to her hair covered ears she sat back, closed her eyes and searched for the answers behind her eyelids.  I stood to leave and noticed all of this and in particular one book, spine facing me, closed read The Portable Atheist.  I intrigued and emboldened by this heretical book.  If she was reading it for class, I could ask with little harm done, if she was reading it for fun, I would applaud her unashamed announcement to the world.

"Is this your book?"
"Yeah."
"May I see it," I asked reaching for the book, presupposing the answer.
"Go ahead."
"So, this isn't just Christopher Hitchins, this is several authors, right?"
"Uh huh, it's a compilation of essays from various people."
"Are you reading this for fun, for class?  What?" searching through the book, noticing the different authors.
"No, just on my own time.  So I can understand better.  Are you an atheist?"

Taken off balance by this question posed so nonchalantly and forward I mouthed over a few words before deciding on asking a follow up question.  "Are you?"  No, came the quick unrehearsed response.  Finding the ball still in my court I decided to ignore the question of the safety of this individual.  I wouldn't have been able to well extract myself from this query. Safe or not she was going to get an answer.

"Yes," I said, "Well, in a sense.  That is the least honest answer I can give you, but to differentiate myself from most in this area I would say yes," motioning towards Harding with a nod of my head.  She looked confused.

"I don't expect you really understand that."
"OK, cool."
"What's your name," I asked extending my hand.
"CH___.  Your's?"
"John; it was good meeting you."
"Yeah, nice talking to you."

I turned to walk away and stopped.

"May I write in here?"
"Sure."
"Look me up on Facebook, send me a message."
"OK, I will."

An atheist evangelist spreading the good news of the death of God.