As a contractor, David did not like to get too involved in the conversations with Burrito House non-IT employees. He waited for his partner to get into the car, and they started driving to the next restaurant to install another system. Bob started giving advice to his younger friend: "Over the years, if there is any lessons that I have learned, it is this: 'if someone talk to you and tell you he or she is utterly devoted to religion and a good Christian, then you need to be careful and alert: you might be talking to a snake right there and then'".

David was a little startled by his partner's comments and general animosity towards those nice Christians and religious people. He was ready to ask whether his partner was from an atheist background. But without asking, Bob started introducing his religious beliefs. Quite contrary to what David thought, Bob grew up in a very large religious family with 15 siblings. The family used to live in a mining town along the West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky border. Using his own words, "them hillbillies, if you don't tell them to stop, they just kept on going and making more and more kids". Along with industrialization of other areas and deindustrialization of the American Mid-west old industrial steel centers of Pennsylvania along with mining centers of West Virginia, his large family gradually started moving from country to big cities all the way South and scattered brothers and sisters along the way. He mentioned that once he was almost lost in Atlanta, Georgia because his parents had trouble keeping track of all the kids.

"I was in school that day and this kid from another grade in school asked me: 'hey Bob, why are you still here? I heard you brother said that your family is leaving town today and I saw them packing the car about 10 minutes ago'. Bob angrily went home and asked why nobody in the family bothered to tell him that the entire family was moving away. That was when Bob's parents found out that the son they have sent out to deliver the message to Bob was nowhere to be found. The whole family drove to school to look for the boy and found he was running around anxiously looking for Bob, because he was earlier distracted by something more interesting than his little brother.

Since Bob got so many brothers and sisters, he liked to joke about some of his family members as being crazy. He told David about one of them "Sutton Brothers" as someone who drank a lot, smoked a lot of weeds and doped a lot too -- in short hurt his body anyway human being could possibly imagine and do. One day, this brother went to a doctor and the doctor said: "Let me tell you son, if you want to do anything in your life, get them done in the next three months, because that is how long you are going to get". The doctor died 3 months later, and Bob's brother went on to live for another 30 years into his 80's. Bob told David: "I figure if I get some of that genes, which I probably do, and take good care of my body, I could live to one hundred and fifty years ".

Bob believed his country and mining town roots contributed a lot to his religious faith, because religion seemed to be the only spiritual life plus entertainment and recreational activity in that mining community since people often danced and sing for religious reasons to celebrate miracles happening frequent and often.

He told David that one miracle happened to him was that when he was three year old, he was lined up with a lot of other boys in the neighborhood and the pastor shook hands with each boy and asked: "Well boy, do you accept Jesus Chris as your personal savior? Are you saved"? Other boys one by one invariably nodded and answered: "yes". When it was his term, Bob answered "hell, no", and he had no idea to this day how that answer came out of his mouth.

Despite of his beyond-his-age sophistication, David grew up with Christianity and Bible like other boys, enjoyed singing, dancing and praying on Sundays. When Bob grew a little older, he started to wonder why those religious folks surrounding him had the tendency to think of every moment as a miracle moment. When ever they saw something unusual happened, they often felt enlightened and fell God was talking to them. If they saw the sunshine coming at a different angle and made a stone emitting light of reflection, they might think that piece of rock as a miracle rock. But when taking a closer look, the shining rock could just have been a broken piece of a beer bottle, as Bob put it "they were all crazy, man". He wondered why his folks always mistaken themselves as the chosen ones close to God if Bible also taught Christians to be humble.

Bob saw a 12 year old cousin who he termed as "not very smart kid" got designated as the assistant of the pastor to help out with his preaching. The pastor wanted to show that even a not so talented boy could serve the God in his unique way, because everyone could be gifted with certain special gifts. In this cousin's case, the cousin had a very thick and resonating voice. "How well could a 12 year old boy understand the profound meaning of those words in the Bible or from the God?" Bob questioned, "But they made him to lead the Sunday prayers and repeated words for the preacher because he had this wonderful voice. The pastor would say something in a low voice and then the boy would repeat with his fantastic church voice." One day the pastor finished preaching and said: "Blow out your candle now". The boy thought it was part of the preaching and repeated that phrase after all other sentences. So the preacher's words became something like the God was going to enlighten us, inspire us, keep the fire of our life burning, but finally blow out our candles"

"How did you get to become so apathetic towards religions coming from that kind of family background?" David asked.

"Well, after I got older, I figured out that miracles simply do not happen every day. In fact, miracles do not happen every century or every millennium even. If you read the Bible, miracles happened primarily in three periods in the Jewish history. A lot of miracles happened in Noah's time, then in Moses' time and then in Jesus' time. That's about it. For so many people to think they are leaving in the time of miracles are just a lot of self-ego, that's what it is. Everyone wants to think themselves as important in the history somehow, even though Bible taught people to be humble. Of course, Bible taught you a lot of things that are contradictory. Jesus told you not to judge people in many places and then told you to judge in a lot of other places. After I left my hometown, some times I got back to attend funerals for some of my relatives. Folks all dressed up and gave nice words to the deceased, they all appeared so nice and friendly and I was so touched. Then after staying there for several days, I usually found those folks were still crazy and not so nice after all."

David did not want to get Bob to spell out more of his cynical view about his relatives and tried to change the context of the conversation to city living. He asked Bob, "Did you stop getting involved in religions after living in the cities?" "Not immediately." Bob continued: "It just seemed people in general are losing interests in religion these days in this country. When I worked in a manufacturing facility, a bunch of us workers used to have this lunch Bible study. We started out with 20 people, a few weeks later, it became 5 people. It didn't take long for those 5 to disappear. This other organizer and teacher of the lunch Bible study group wanted to go after those people who ceased to come and tried to get them back. I just thought if people come to ask me questions about Bible I would teach them and I myself would believe some of the Christian beliefs. But I am not going to go after someone and try to conquer others for the glory of the God. See Christianity is for people who accept Christianity, if others do not accept Christianity, there is no point going after them."

"But I thought America is becoming more religious these days, especially under the Bush administration. Neo-con is all about forming an alliance with right wing Christian conservatives. If you look at the policies and those Republicans in charge, I felt America is more religious than how it was in the entire 90's". Bob said: "Yeah, it does seem the rich and powerful people are more religious than before, at least they say that". David smiled in amusement recalling Bob's comments about people who publicly profess their religious loyalties and devotions could often be snakes. That comment was actually quite similar to that of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mound", warning "beware of Farrasis".

But being a scientist for sometime in his previous professional life, David just couldn't live very comfortably with logical inconsistencies in the world and wondered why such inconsistency existed in the belief of those people that are in power today in the United States. He was glad to get a teacher of the Bible to ask such questions: "If somebody is really a radical Christian, what kind of attitude should he or she have towards Jews and Israel? I often feel confused and incomprehensible if a country or a government supports Israel as strong and unconditionally as US, do you brand that country as very Christian, very conservative, or very none Christian, but just religious and radical?"

Bob started showing off his knowledge about theology to prove that he had really taught and consulted co-workers on religious matters at lunch before, because what he said later on were things David have never heard before from his limited contacts with people with religious faith or from religious readings.