an interesting type of pacifism

I was pretty ticked off today as I left my Astronomy class at the local JC. Mainly because I don't particularly enjoy being call "star debris!" It is one thing if a person says "You are primarily composed of star debris", it is a completely different matter (pardon the pun) to say "You are star debris."
That's just name calling!

After my sister and I were venting to one another about how scientists don't know anything without philosophers, we decided to take up the conversation with a fellow Astronomy Lab student. We told him that we were debating a topic that came up in lecture (he didn't actually attend the lecture so we had to fill him in) and asked if he would mind sharing his thoughts on the subject. At first, he seemed very open to discussion, but his expression quickly changed to that of a vertigo experience once the topic was actually put out there.
The question posed to him was that "if matter is all that exists," (to this he gave a nod of assent), "then where is Hamlet?" "Is Hamlet at the theater where it's performed? Is it in the ink and the paper that it's written on? Is it carefully placed on the audio CD that 'contains' it?"
He looked shocked and muttered something like
"Um....you're...uh...asking...uh...way...way far out of the box questions....."(pause)"......that's kinda like philosophy."
We tried to discuss what the purpose of General Ed is if all of the departments actually have nothing to do with one another.

We had a little small talk about "what's your major?"
He asked if we wanted to be Astronomers; I said "No! Then I couldn't go see Hamlet!" I would rather be a well rounded person. If I want to be well rounded then, according to the lecture this morning, I can't be an Astronomer all of the time.

Here's the problem:
I enjoy going out to dinner and seeing a play; according to materialism the play doesn't exist, and according to certain philosophies my dinner doesn't.

Shortly afterward, we were talking with a Messianic Jewish women about the upcoming Passover and the guy, let's call him "Geoff" started asking questions about it. Since the women and I are both rather passionate about Christ's fullfillment of the Jewish traditions, it must have made us look too "religious" or something. Geoff said "Let's not start any wars over this or anything. Let's just keep it peaceful." Is it possible that somehow he didn't see that the woman and I were actually in agreement? Apparently he had been inculturated to think that religion=war. He had no problem with our beliefs, but got rather uneasy when we appeared to actually think our beliefs were true.
It made me think of G.K. Chesterton's book The Ball and the Cross. Chesterton paints these two characters, a Christian and an Atheist, who are the only two people on earth that think religion is something worth fighting about. Chesterton's brilliant story involves them running away from all authorities who are trying to prevent them from fighting to the death over their disagreements. I strongly recommend the book for anyone who tends to get stuck in there own logic.

I tried to explain to Geoff that "religion" isn't the problem. You can't just say "People fight over things that are important, therefore, if we make nothing important, they'll have no reason to fight!"
The women agreed with me, but I'm not sure that it was making any sense to our new materialistic, pacifistic friend.