“Do you think that’s how it is?” I asked him. “Do you think we have moments, epiphanies, where the address gets put into the GPS and then it just kind of goes from there?” Like this one. The misery of James Duffy, of Gabriel Conroy, of Eveline and Mrs. Mooney and Little Chandler were suddenly, frighteningly relevant to the choices I seemed to be making, the choice that had brought me back to the coffee shop this day.

“I wouldn’t call it a ‘choice,’” he said. “I don’t think Eveline ‘chose’ not to go with Frank. I think Jimmy’s point is we are products of our environments, our societies, our cultures. I don’t think we make ‘choices’ in this reward and punishment battle between heaven and hell religious people want to divide the world with. But moments of divergence? Yes. I think we have those. I can think of one or two in the ancient past of my youth. We like to ponder and philosophize, but the truth is we have no clue why we think the way we do, why gray is our favorite color, or some things make us angry or hungry, or horny, and others don’t. For me, and I think for Joyce, the what is therefore more interesting than the why. It is the sole province of fools and Bibles to declare certain knowledge of the why of things.”

“So you don’t believe in good and evil at all?” I said.

“Where do you get that from?”

“If you think everything we do and think is automatic, I don’t see how anything could even be called good or evil.”

“You religious people want to believe the sodomites of the world have no morality because you’re too lazy to think things through. You’d rather delegate the hard work to some old book. Charity is good. Helping people is good. I don’t need recourse to divine authority to know this. Likewise, hurting people is bad, stealing is bad, being an asshole is frowned upon. We believe in good and bad, we just don’t believe some dead druids four thousand years ago understood it better than we do now. Coincidentally, they didn’t understand arithmetic either.”

“And yet you get it wrong so often.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

I said, “You side with fanatical Islam, you support sex changes for kids, and you give about two thirds less charity than religious people. To name a few.”

“Do you mean anti-imperialist and anti-child-suicide? Yes. That’s true. But more than that, secular humanism can have a conversation about it. And if by dumb luck you manage to make a good point, we can change our position. As opposed to religious people who just want to kill or be killed for the sake of the loving God.”

I said, “No offense, but the idea that the world can function with logic as its guiding moral compass is the stupidest thing atheists say. Yes, it’s very nice that we can all agree that abusing children is bad. That is an insufficient ethical foundation to base a society on. Besides for your endless, baffling blind spots, when a person is down and out and filled with anger and resentment and an old lady walks by and you can grab her purse with her welfare check and run away, what can possibly stop you in that moment other than God? Other than the idea that there is a bigger drama going on than the rumble in your belly and the unfairness of life? That there will be an accounting and a judgment in the end? Secular humanism has nothing to say to that angry, hungry man.”

“Moral laws exist in every culture, Michael. Don’t kill, don’t steal. The ones who never heard of your God have somehow managed to work it out.”

“Yes, but there’s no imperative. Sure, a philosopher can do some math and come out with a pretty good valuation of what is good and what is bad theoretically. The Bible says it explicitly: ‘The words are very close to your heart.’ But when the stakes are high no one cares. On a personal level. And that’s where the real challenge is. Not in the theoretical space. What can a secular humanist say to someone who decides might does make right? Why should he listen to you if he is stronger than you? Because you’ve invented some formula you declare establishes what is ‘right’ that’s better for everyone else? That system will work for about four minutes. There’s a fundamental difference between secular morality and religious morality.”

“Correct. One evolves and one doesn’t.”

“Exactly. Secular morality deals with right and wrong and religion deals with good and evil. Right and wrong are subjective. Today you think this is right. Tomorrow you’ll think something else is right, and this thing that you thought was right yesterday is absolutely wrong. That’s basically what happened to women’s rights now that they conflict with the more fashionable trans agenda. And what happens when two people, or two groups of people, disagree about what’s right? You and your club are right because you’re smarter? Or better?”

“How is a morality derived from a holy book better than one we can at least think through?” he said.

“Because good and evil, as opposed to right and wrong, are not subjective. We all know what’s good. We all know what’s evil. Those principles don’t change based on who is in charge or social trends. But a world that is just a coincidental arrangement of atoms can have no good and evil in an objective sense. The concept itself doesn’t exist. You can reason about what might be more beneficial for the most amount of people, but that’s not good and evil, that’s right and wrong. And everybody thinks they’re right. It’s a cliche that prisons are full of innocent men. Secular humanism has nothing to say about abortion. And it has nothing to say about being humble, or selfless, or the death penalty, or stealing when things are unfair, or respecting your parents, or raising your children. It can’t philosophically compel kindness or charity. We are the least religious generation in history and by far the most miserable and lonely and depraved. There’s no Pew survey on this, but I’ll bet you the number of people who swipe off a side-view mirror when no one is watching and leave their number is at a historical low. And atheists are like, ‘We’re gonna turn the corner any minute!’”

“Right. And sixty five percent of Americans are religious,” he said.

“That’s ‘Identifies as x,’ or ‘Kind of if they’re forced to check a box guess they sort of believe in some kind of higher power’ or ‘Goes to church once in a while.’ The more honest surveys differentiate between these types and people who feel God and religion play a major role in their life, are active members of their church, attend services regularly, that sort of thing. The meaningfully religious group has massive statistical disparities with the general population in areas like self-reported happiness, marital satisfaction, even life expectancy, and way less substance abuse and criminality and mental illness.”

“It seems you have it all figured out,” he said.

“No. But maybe the Bible does.”

“One of the most frightening things to have been said in all of human history.”

“I would say heil Hitler was a little scarier.”

“Hitler did not kill nearly as many people as religions have over the years,” he said.

“Right. But it’s human nature to murder and conquer and make war. The parts of the world not afflicted with religion, like the East, have managed to keep pace with the monotheistic West in the war-making department just fine. People use religion to serve war, not the other way around.”

He said, “In the world today, the least religious countries are the most peaceful, the least warlike, have the least amount of crime and violence and the highest levels of self-reported happiness.”

“Yeah, except China. Which makes it like a hundred to one the other way.”