This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

I've never seen rainstorms like the ones during my LDS mission to South America. Black clouds would roll in off the Atlantic and unload a hydro-beating so strong that I could feel myself get shorter.

One evening during such a storm, my companion and I sought shelter in a bus stop. We watched rats struggle to swim across the street. A truck hydroplaned into a ditch and a cow fell out. Birds dropped out of trees. People yelled. It was a little scary.

Staring out at the maelstrom, Elder Barkus claimed that this wasn't the first time rain had caused such havoc in Labios de Puerco. It had happened before during the Great Flood in the Bible.

"This entire area was underwater with the rest of the world," he said. "Sin was cleansed when the earth was rebaptized by complete immersion during the Great Flood."

I was a new missionary and should have deferred to the wisdom of my senior companion. Unfortunately, I was also still me, and therefore completely incapable of keeping my mouth shut. I told him that the flood was probably a more localized event.

Him: "Elder, elder, elder. Have you even read the entire Bible?"

Me: "No. Does it say anything in there about how two capybaras got on an ark 7,000 miles away, and then trudged all the way back here once things dried out?"

I wish it had ended there. That evening at dinner, Barkus announced to the other four elders in our apartment that Elder Kirby didn't believe the Bible was true.

The discussion didn't go entirely the way Barkus wanted it to. After all was shouted and done, the vote ended up 4-2 in favor of the Earth being completely covered by the Great Flood.

That isn't why I should have deferred to Elder Barkus in the first place. It came later — through the rest of the time we were together — when he incessantly grilled me on what he considered to be testimony-determining points of scripture.

Did I believe that David actually slew Goliath? Did the Israelites cause the walls of Jericho to collapse merely by yelling at them? Where did I suppose the "narrow neck of land" described in the Book of Mormon was today? Did Jesus feed a mob of people with a couple of fish and some bread?

Answers: Maybe. I have no idea. Don't care. Hey, you want to get some scones?

There are some people with whom debating scripture is a huge waste of time. Either they refuse to believe anything, or they already "know" everything. And they can't stand it if you aren't in line with them.

The worst part (for me anyway) is how willing they are to come up with any answer, no matter how ridiculous, in order to support their conclusions.

For Barkus, every question I pitched had a perfectly logical explanation: "All things are possible with God" or, in other words, "Magic did it."

Note: Yes, this included large river rodents trudging all the way back to South America after the flood.

Ironically, these divisive discussions don't occur most often in people of opposite faiths. For example, Hindus and Buddhists don't debate Christians and Jews about the ark or how God rounded up the animals for it. They don't care.

The worst (and most pointless) arguments develop between people of a similar faith, just with different takes on it.

Small wonder that the different faiths don't get along. We can't even get people in the same faith to do that.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.