I was sharing my interest in genealogy with a friend and coworker. There's an ancestral Eve that modern day humans can be traced back too. I have a fascination with a big family tree people have been working on through WikiTree. I haven't yet connected enough ancestors to be apart of it, but I'm still trying!

Anyway, I brought up the whole "Eve" thing and he stops me. Asking if I meant "Noah." I was confused at first, said no I was referring to a shared female ancestor. So he answered "Oh, Noah's wife." I wanted to smile and ask if he was trolling me, but to tell you the truth it just then occurred to me he was raised southern baptist. I just stayed quite and he continued "Well God flooded the Earth and wiped out all the rest of the humans. But you can believe what you want too." I was just like "I've got to trust what science has said about it, I guess." I thought of something along the way and asked what he knew about Chinese dynastys. He knew they had history like a thousand years before any Europeans. I said "They existed the same time the flood would have happened." and ended the conversation there.

It was just a tense and stressful strain on a friendship I wasn't expecting. After how long I've known him, the political jokes and gay/straight ally shit we've been through. I forget people around me didn't challenge the sunday school stories like me. Like there's not the same level of fear offending your religious friends and they never speak to you again. Religious friends might toss friendship with an athiest like trash. They've got more religious friends and church fellowship whatever to spare. For an athiest it's like, welp guess I'll talk to my internet friends instead of having a pizza party or going to the movies.