One was the university role playing club which was called AMERICA, a rather tortured acronym which stood for ‘Association for Middle-Earth Role playing and Individual Character Assimilation’.

Don’t blame me – I didn’t name it. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. I did get elected to be the club President at one point which meant I could make the obvious joke. It wasn’t funny then either.

But that’s not really the topic of this post.

More importantly, I was part of the formation of a completely new student group, the Auckland University Freethinkers, which was a small and loose association of assorted atheists, agnostics, and sceptics.

We formed partly in response to the growing presence of the Evangelical Union on campus. This was a cross-denominational Christian group which seemed to draw mainly from conservative Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.

They were hard to miss and a consistent presence in the Quad, which was a common area that formed one of the twin hubs of the student social sphere, the other being Shadows, the student drinking-hole.

Student life seemed to have these two extremes, the hedonistic binge-drinking culture on one side, and the moralising of the Evangelical Union on the other.

I guess the Freethinkers wanted to show there was a third way.

Some of the more fired-up individuals in the Freethinkers got involved in a series of public debates with the Evangelical Union. I’m not sure whether they challenged us, or we challenged them – not that it really mattered as there were people on both sides who were obviously spoiling for the fight.

I can’t remember all the debate topics, this being close to 20 years ago now. But I do recall one on Creation versus Evolution, a perennial favourite at the time, as well as one on the Historicity of Christ.

The debates proved to be fairly disappointing affairs, at least to me.

The Evangelical Union speakers had the standard prepared talking points, and the Freethinker speakers had the standard retorts.

It was all accompanied by much booing, hissing and jeering from the audience which was usually dominated by Evangelical Union supporters. In hindsight, this wasn’t that surprising given their higher levels of organisation and commitment.

So the debates ended up as largely theatrical performances which did draw a mixture of students eager to see the spectacle but as exercises in communication, they were abject failures.

The Freethinkers were taken under the wing of the NZ Rationalist and Humanist Association whose headquarters were just up the road from the University at Rationalist House.

At the time, it felt strange and a little daunting to be such a young face surrounded by those who seemed so much older and wiser. But they were very welcoming and keen to encourage us and treated us very generously.

That year the Religious Society of Friends, who are more commonly known as Quakers, extended an invitation to attend one of their Summer gatherings to all members of the Rationalist Association.

These were week long residential camps held in different parts of the country each year where Quakers would come together and share in discussions, picnics, walks, fun and relaxation.

I’d never met any Quakers before so I decided to join the Rationalists who were attending, along with a few of the other Freethinkers.

As I recall, this particular gathering was held at a camp ground near Wanganui. The Quakers were also mostly much older than I was but they were just as welcoming, friendly and genuinely curious.

The group discussions between the Rationalists and the Quakers were wonderful to be a part of.

We talked about morality and ethics, faith and reason, life and death, science and spirituality.

No-one booed or hissed or talked over anyone. Indeed, at times we just sat in respectful silence thinking deeply about what the previous speaker had just said, until someone felt moved to respond.

Such is the way of Quakers.

The contrast between our debates with the Evangelical Union could not have been more stark.

I came to have a great deal of admiration and respect for these gentle, loving Christians who strived to live each day as a better person than the day before.

At the end of the gathering, one of the Quakers joked that we were all actually Quakers too, and just didn’t realise it.

If we could just get over this God business.

One of the Rationalists replied with a twinkle in his eye that he was thinking the same thing about the Quakers.

And they were both right.

In one of his recent posts, he talked about how he had seldom ventured into the topics of religion and evolution, despite the fact that he was quite passionate about them.

I commented that I personally wished he’d talk more about them, even though it can be rather controversial and could be a lot of work since they are topics dear to my heart and central in my thinking.

It then occurred to me that I would be being a little bit hypocritical if I didn’t do the same.

So here goes.

In a broad sense, the idea of evolution has been a constant part of my life from a very young age.

So I’ll start there.

When I was 6 or so, I was fascinated to discover the world of dinosaurs. Particularly, Tyrannosaurus Rex. They were huge, scaly, had claws and teeth for Africa, and made loud gutteral roars as they tore huge dripping chunks of flesh from their prey. As a boy, with those traits, you had me at ‘hello’.

OK, I made the last part up – no-one knows what dinosaurs really sounded like. But in my head, that’s the noise they made. As an aside, there are some recent strains of scientific thought that suggest that many dinosaurs may have had feathers, not scales. But I digress…

It wasn’t just Tyrannosaurus either. I loved all the dinosaurs I could find mention of, which was quite a few: Diplodocus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus … OK, OK, I admit I was somewhat obsessed with them.

Hey, I was a geeky kind of kid. So sue me.

Anyway, my family happened to travel down to Dunedin to see my great grandfather and grandmother. We called him ‘Granfa’ for short and he was an amazing old man. He’d lost a leg in the Great War but his mind was sharp as a tack. He used to happily play this game with me called ‘Tip It’ with 3 cups and a five cent piece. In fact, he’d play it with me all afternoon, interspersed with stories.

And I loved him for it.

My great grandmother and maiden great aunt Nath (short for Nathalie) who lived with them were a different story. They had joined the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist and fairly isolationist sect of Christianity that had a community in Dunedin.

Severe and stern, I think they had decided by then that my mother and father were a lost cause. Likely because they were sure that I’d been conceived out of wedlock and had dim views of fornicators.

Anyway, they decided to focus their evangelical energies on me and my sister. They gave us our own bibles to keep and encouraged us to read them. My mother seemed to feel this was fairly harmless and didn’t intervene.

My sister was not that keen, being 4 years younger, whereas I loved books. Particularly ones without pictures that adults normally read. So I started reading it – from the beginning – I knew that was how proper books were read.

Genesis.

Aunt Nath was very pleased and encouraged by my sudden fervour for bible reading and started taking a close personal interest in me, thawing greatly and often hovering nearby, warmly offering to answer any questions I might have.

Well funnily enough, I had read Genesis by now and I did have a question. You can probably see where this is going.

Aunt Nath came in and sat down very close beside me on the bed, folding her hands over her lap and leaning forward with anticipation. This was obviously going so much better than she had hoped.

“Where is the bit about dinosaurs being created?” I asked.

Aunt Nath frowned.

“There is NO such thing as dinosaurs.” she replied, archly.

Sacrilege.

So being the helpful and enthusiastic young boy I was, I proceeded to tell her about all the dinosaurs I knew of – at great length and in great detail.  It was obvious she hadn’t had the benefit of reading all the wonderful books I had, being old and all, so I proceeded to make up for this deficit.

As she had sat so close to me, probably to secure my conversion, it was now rather hard for her to just get up and walk out without appearing extremely rude. I was rapt to have an audience so I was in full flight to her growing horror.

When I finally paused for a breath (probably about the mid Cretaceous), she leapt at this opening and offering mumbled excuses, beat a hasty retreat. I followed her out of the room, still talking and waving my arms animatedly and offering to continue my lecture later.

My mother was standing in the hallway, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to stifle a smile. She’d been keeping an ear on our conversation, probably to ensure I was safe from Aunt Nath.

Aunt Nath has never really spoken to me since.