Reading Rainbow: Atheists and Foxholes

Last week I went binge buying on Amazon and ordered Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Great American Hypocrites and God is not Great. I’d seen the various authors give intelligent interviews, and I wanted to read more of what they had to say.

Don’t worry mom, I am not a vegan food terrorist, hubristic partisan hack, or atheist out to make everyone worship Darwin… at least not yet.

I had the books delivered to me at work, and our BYU intern brought one to my office. She’s always been pleasant, even though she knows I’m an ex-Mormon that’s “gone off the deep end.”

She handed me the package, and I said, “Yeah! One of my books arrived.”

“Oooh, what’d you get?” She said.

“Let’s see,” I replied, opening the package to find the book that mocked her religion and framed me as hostile to her and all other believers. WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN THE GARDENING BOOK! THE ONE ABOUT HOMEMAKING AND CANNING TOMATOES!

I blushed a severe shade of red and hesitated.

“Do you not want to share?” She said.

I didn’t want her to think I’d just purchased How to Enslave and Eat Innocent Children, so I pulled out the bright sunny cover of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and laughed with obvious embarrassment.


Luckily this intern has a sense of humor/strong sense of civility and laughed so hard that my face returned to its natural color.