Night Clerks 2: Do you believe in that?

The other night we were having some pizza and people were complaining that we had no chocolate, so Tristan and I took off down to the local servo in search of some late night munchies. 30 seconds after we'd passed through the door, we'd found exactly what we wanted and proceeded to the register to pay for our food. Now I've previously mentioned how its possible for the night clerks to fuck with you and it appears that this guy had exactly that idea. As I was paying for the chocolate, he spotted I was wearing my evolution shirt, which has a diagram of a man evolving from an ape through to a man and then a man with a beer.

Attendant: Do you believe in that?
Me: Believe in what?
Attendant: Evolution
Me: Umm, yeah (sensing trouble)
Attendant: I don't, all the answers are in the bible

Now... seeing the impending danger from the attendant who is quite obviously of a middle eastern decent, I've started to get ready for a quick escape. In a fantastic counter move, the guy has placed the chocolate on his side of the counter making it impossible for me to make the quick exit without looking like a complete jerk. Quickly seeing that he has the upper hand he begins lecturing me about how the bible/koran has predicted both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and how something massive is coming. I also got to hear stories about the creation of earth, my personal favourites were the adam's apple story and the salty sea story.

Apparently the story of why man has an adam's apple is because while in the garden of eden he decided to listen to Eve and chow down on an apple that he wasn't supposed to and as punishment he was chucked out and given a lump in the throat. The salty sea story was somewhat related being about Adam too. Story here goes that he was so unhappy that he betrayed his god and cried himself a sea (not like an emo who would decide he had to provide the sea with blood from cuts off his wrist).

Believe it or not, the story gets more interesting...

Attendant: Now I'm a second year biomedical student and they're teaching me all of this stuff about evolution, it makes it very hard for me.
Me: Unhuh
Attendant: But you have to follow your beliefs, my friends have cut me off because of it

Now, if you decide to believe in a religion thats fine... I respect that. At what point can a person go to university to study biomedical science and then decide to disregard a fundamental theory that science is based on? I mean seriously, you're talking about the fact that cells adapt and evolve to their environment... If you can't deal with the fact that it happens and has alot of scientific weight behind it then you probably shouldn't be in the biomedical field. Reading a book isn't going to stop bones being dug up and scientists watching things on a smaller scale (cells) evolving and mutating. You can't just decide that the earth isn't the millions of years old that the same scientific processes you're going to be using have proved.

I actually thought I may never run into a person that has interpreted religion/religious scripture so literally. If you want to believe something is out there and that something kicked off the universe then thats fine. Disregarding modern science is something from the middle ages and you're diluting yourself if you think that the bible/koran is still the definitive on how everything happened. Something that got written a few thousand years ago is bound to have some errors along the way somewhere, for all we know the bible may not have even got a proof read. So sure, believe but don't turn it into a literal translation.

This was actually meant to be a quick 5 minute trip to grab some chocolate and I ended up with some dude lecturing me about religious beliefs.... I managed to escape shortly after he told me he didn't believe in drinking either... I hope he got a great look of me drinking the rest of my beer as we bailed out of the place. I admire his fantastic move to stall me and generally make that 10mins in front of the counter some of the most uncomfortable I've experienced. It just proves that the average night clerk will do anything to hold up/completely root your night around.

Blendered Love