The fact that something to the tune of a 100 people showed up to hear three UK student believers (one Muslim, two protestant Christians) and three atheists or secular thinkers (two students, one the national legal director for American Atheists) spoke well, I thought, of the eagerness of the Lexington community to engage religious issues. I’m sure there were people there who were genuinely interested and open, hoping to have their minds stretched by an interesting chat.

Unfortunately, they got drowned out by a heaping helping of bombast. There was the age-old question of why atheists feel any moral obligation to other people, lacking as they do any ethical framework (oh, bother). There was the atheists’ favorite reprisal: So, Mr. Believer, am I going to hell? And then there was the question and answer session, with so much braying I felt myself wincing as the Holier/More Rational Than Thou thunder blasted down from on high.

And then, out of the bluster and spray, a soft admission. Yahya Ahmed, the Muslim student on the panel, said he had thought about something he had said earlier and decided it wasn’t what he really meant. He went on to offer an apology, a clarification, and a stream of further points aimed at answering questions that he thought he could illuminate: What does Islam teach its disciples about the nature God?

His specifics on this point were good, of course. What has stayed with me is the emotional courage to get there. I don’t mean to fawn too hard. There is certainly a part of me that feels silly commending someone for just telling the truth. But if even Barack Obama can’t get his story straight, getting a morsel of straightforward talk may be a greater luxury than I might usually think.

When listening to Yahya open himself up to the crowd, I felt bound to the moment. Here was someone moving beyond the blather because what mattered was learning, was moving forward, was trying, as best he could, to tell the truth.

While the moderator passed over my up-raised arm and, “Ooh, Ooh, Me, Me!” expression for a good hour or so, the question I wanted answered was whether either side could muster a few points on which they could learn from the thoughts and history of the other.

The answer Yahya left me with was not what I could learn from them, but what we could do to peer a little deeper into our own perspectives and those of others. By refusing to stand on what we’ve said for the sole reason that it came out of our mouths, we clear a path for an honesty of purpose, of truth-seeking, of re-focusing our vision by inches or by miles. By being willing to change what we think, we maintain the most precious prize of integrity, a moral soundness built on growth.