re: For my 20,000th post I give you hope

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He burnt and destroyed cities.

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Fiction.

You probably believe a guy spent 3 days in the belly of a whale and lived to preach about it.

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As an atheist I welcome people who evangelize, they have a firm belief in something and act on it out of love for their fellow man. I think it's nonsense to expect my Christian friends and family to not try and evangelize to me.

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Same here. I find religion to be a pretty silly waste of time (and struggle to understand why so many fall for it), but I appreciate the good intentions of those who try to convert me.
Plus, it gives me an opportunity to engage them in discussion as to why they believe what they believe. I don't expect to convince anybody on the spot, but I know that once I get that little seed of questioning doubt planted, it can continue to grow and gnaw at them, given enough independent and reasoned thought.

Why do you need to "convince" anyone of anything?

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Plus, it gives me an opportunity to engage them in discussion as to why they believe what they believe. I don't expect to convince anybody on the spot, but I know that once I get that little seed of questioning doubt planted, it can continue to grow and gnaw at them, given enough independent and reasoned thought.

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Why do you need to "convince" anyone of anything?

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I don't "need" to convince anyone, but I do feel the desire to point out what I consider to be a falsehood. If a scientologist knocked on your door and began telling you all about their religion, I'm sure you would feel the same way. Plus, who knows, I keep an open mind, so maybe somebody will tell me something I haven't considered, but I'm not holding my breath. The other reason is that I just love a good argument of course :)

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You seem very insecure about your beliefs

Your statements are validation of it

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I assure you that I'm very secure in my belief (or lack thereof). Anyway, as I said before, I harbor no resentment towards people of faith, and enjoy civil arguments with them :) I also understand that when they attempt to evangelize someone they genuinely think they are trying to "save me", so I appreciate the gesture.

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Why do you need to "convince" anyone of anything?

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The same reason you want to Evangelize, I suppose. You think it's good for them and in their best interests. But also for self validation. I find from personal experience, as I used to care how people could believe in the fairy tales in the Bible, that wanting validation for our beliefs is pretty normal. It happens on both sides.


Story time:

I had an ex-gf at A&M that I used to discuss religion with, she might even have been my wife if I was the standard Breakaway type Aggie that she adored. Context. My father was Catholic. He stopped practicing before I was born and married my Presbyterian mother, but now both are pretty involved with the Methodist Church. My Dad never shared his Catholicism with me, but I was always a bit intrigued by it. My ex-gf hated that I showed any interest at all because she wanted me to like her trendy version of Christianity more so than the kind of straight forward Methodist/Presbyterian Church I was used to. She was almost disgusted that I would say I liked some things about the Catholic Church, but was turned off by Breakaway pimping some iTunes release for some crappy generic music. The standard lines about how confession to priests is fundamentally wrong since it's about a "personal relationship" or how you should only pray to Jesus, not a Saint or Mary were things she went to. I couldn't understand why she cared so deeply, or had such a deep seeded bias against the Catholic Church even though she never stepped inside one. Young boys look up to their fathers and my curiosity towards anything about their dad obviously comes from a different place, and as someone that had to teach themselves about the Catholic Church, I was always amazed at the emotional investment she seemed to have towards something she knew almost nothing about. And then, as I started to reject Christianity all together, I found myself entertaining the same type of rhetoric she had used. I would snark about the fairy tales in the Bible the same what she would snark about Catholic Dogma. I wanted others to tell me that the other side was wrong, and getting someone to see my way would only make me feel better, I thought.

Spirituality/religion is a deep part of the human condition for whatever reason. But so is logic. Even the most deeply religious see hypocrisy, ludicrousness and contradiction, even if they don't want to admit it. Even the most deeply atheist sense a lack of fulfillment, lack of purpose, and long for greater understanding, even if they want to pretend the Big Bang provides them all they need to know.

But I don't talk to people about religion. I only ever really did/so it on the Internet where it won't affect personal relationships. It's a personal journey. Even if someone wants my perspective, it's most likely only to reinforce their own.