When a Christian Makes Contact with an Atheist
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Personally, I'm an atheist (anti-theist to be more precise), but I'll say that in my experience catholic christians tend to be less culty than protestant christians. Probably has something to do with the part that catholics believe that they actually have to be good vs protestants believing that simply believing is all you need.
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Personally, I'm an atheist (anti-theist to be more precise), but I'll say that in my experience catholic christians tend to be less culty than protestant christians. Probably has something to do with the part that catholics believe that they actually have to be good vs protestants believing that simply believing is all you need.
Similarly, I'm an antitheist pagan. it's fun.
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I had the misfortune of needing to attend a "Christian" university for a short while due to visa reasons in the US, the vomit inducing cult speak they do at every opprtunity at a institute that's about education and science was appalling, imagine the kids who have to grow up in such an environment, no wonder the country is so fucked up right now
I once had a study partner who was raised like that. We were scheduling our first after school study session and trying to figure out time. I shoot out sunday and he goes "nah I have church, wait don't you have church?" "nah, I'm an atheist"
dude vanished. Three days later I notice him trying to like... hide in a hoodie towards the opposite side of the class. I walk over, worried I offended him or something. He basically tells me that he can't interact with satanists and I just go "look, if you don't wanna interact with me, don't. You don't have to hide in a corner or try to avoid me. If you wanna draw the line at just existing in the same room, ok then."
To his credit, he did try to have a study session with me after that, but I had to end it early. The dude was so on edge, it was like he was convinced I was gonna stab him at any moment.
Years later he contacted me to apologize out of the blue on facebook. Went completely off grid traveling the world. My guess trying to compensate for just how little he knew of it.
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Most people are probably agnostic anyway
Well yeah, most theists and atheists are agnostic.
Which makes it a rather pointless label.
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Personally, I'm an atheist (anti-theist to be more precise), but I'll say that in my experience catholic christians tend to be less culty than protestant christians. Probably has something to do with the part that catholics believe that they actually have to be good vs protestants believing that simply believing is all you need.
Idk, Catholic services and practices are waaaay cultier than protestant ones. I mean, they all have pictures in their homes of the same white guy wearing a giant ceremonial hat and robe who lives in his own special nation. As a firm agnostic, I don't have a horse in this race, but my experience differs greatly from yours. They're all mild hobbyists compared to evangelicals anyway.
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I grew up Christian in a place where most people were atheist, went to a Christian school, where about half the students were Christian and the other was atheist, then moved to different places all over. My experience through all of that was always: Regular people in either group mostly don't give a shit and just want to live their own lives. The "Christians" you see on TV are not normal people.
Like 40% of the US are. It may not be their primary focus or how they actually live their lives but their views align and they will absolutely sell your children out to the Nazis or see you murdered if it aligns with what tv tells them.
Why do you care if they are the kind of folks who would start the lynching if they are the folks who would hang out and drink lemonade while you choke your life away?
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How does saying that such hostile treatment is abnormal "erase" anyone's lived experiences?
If you tell someone who lived only eating one meal a day during elementary school that they did not have a normal childhood, you are directly commenting ON their "lived experience", not erasing it.
You seem to be conflating "that's not normal" with "that never happens", which is not reasonable.
The weird shit on tv is incredibly common in the south
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A Christian girl once told me that she couldn't date me because I was a non believer. I could tell it hurt her to say it, but it seemed like genuine conviction.
It's a shame, because she was lovely.
Dodged a bullet there
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I live in the US and in real life Ive had far more atheists be assholes about religion. That said, Christians are in power, so they likely dont feel the need to be so loud.
The Christian belief is as trivially obviously fake as Zeus and has done a lot of harm
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Nice deflection, bro. But my point was exactly that. You cannot "convert" someone to atheism. That would imply atheism is a belief, rather than the lack thereof. So my question stands.
It's obvious that they meant convince them to stop believing in any faith. You are trying to twist words when nobody is even slightly confused.
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Hmm. I'm going to go ahead and assume this is a bad-faith comment. Despite that, I'll try to help.
I'm guessing from the phrasing that you're not aware, but if you're trying to change someone's belief system, it's called conversion.
I appreciate that you were probably trying to do the "atheism isn't a belief, it's a lack of a belief" thing, but unfortunately that's how the language works in this case.
That is a) not how the language works and b) an atheist would never try to convince anyone about anything religious. Aka: convert. Because that would mean for him Atheism is a religion, which it is not.
I am an Atheist. My inner self is convinced: there are not gods. And that is it. I do not try to make you go away from your god. And I myself: have no god. There is no church or cult of Atheism. there is no organization (perhaps in weird countries there are, who knows?), there is no path to follow, there is no morning or evening or any other ritual, there are no prayers, there is most certainly no evangelism towards Atheism. -
The distinction is just semantics in my mind, too, yeah. I hold the same position as agnostics, in that I do not believe this whole god concept can be disproven, because it is not rigorously formulated like a scientific thesis.
But I put that as "I do not believe that there is a god" and respectively I call myself an atheist, because well, there's many other things which cannot be disproven, like for example Big Foot.
And if a kid were to ask me, whether Big Foot exists, I'm not going to lead with "we really can't know". That's just misleading.
I guess, agnostics differentiate between gods and Big Foot, because there's so many more people who are convinced of these gods' existence. But yeah, I don't do that either, because I've seen how many people are willing to believe climate change isn't real. Lots of people believing something is just not an argument to me anymore.Neither atheism nor any "real religion" has to do anything with proving.
Agnostics: there might be a god, but I do not know ... never saw one! Does that count?
Atheist: I am convinced there are no gods (but can not prove it: how the funk do you prove a non existing?) Bottom line, I do not care. Just like an Agnostics, I am just convinced and he leaves it open to surprise, when he dies ... or when ever he meets a god(dess).And I most certainly have not any desire to convince a believer that his believes are BS. Because: I am an Atheist: I do not fucking care about his/her believes!!
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Idk, Catholic services and practices are waaaay cultier than protestant ones. I mean, they all have pictures in their homes of the same white guy wearing a giant ceremonial hat and robe who lives in his own special nation. As a firm agnostic, I don't have a horse in this race, but my experience differs greatly from yours. They're all mild hobbyists compared to evangelicals anyway.
Cultish practices vary from church to church, but there's way more protestant cults than catholic ones.
And I mean proper cults, where they know how loony they seem, so they try to seem more normal to potential members. Then they love bomb newcomers, before inviting them to the special wednesday meetings where they promise supernatural powers if the newcomer is humiliated before the group and love bombed again when they're most vulnerable. Last step is making them cut ties with non-believers and ostracizing any apostates.
Catholic King making infallible decrees is harmless compared to that.
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My experience has been the exact opposite!
I suspect it's a cultural thing, though. I'm British, but I know America has a very aggressive evangelical base. There are mega-churches and politicians and sports people are always talking about God and Jesus and we just don't have that over here.
On the other hand, a few atheists I know have tried to "convert" me before.
I'm guessing it's a certainty thing. From what I've seen of the American churches, some of them are absolutely borderline cults. So of course the folk are certain that they're right.
And there's certainly enough ammunition in religion as a whole for anyone who hates religion to think that they're right.
"there's certainly enough ammunition in religion as a whole for anyone who hates religion to think that they're right."
Is a crazy way to phrase "there is evidence that supports their views"
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Cultish practices vary from church to church, but there's way more protestant cults than catholic ones.
And I mean proper cults, where they know how loony they seem, so they try to seem more normal to potential members. Then they love bomb newcomers, before inviting them to the special wednesday meetings where they promise supernatural powers if the newcomer is humiliated before the group and love bombed again when they're most vulnerable. Last step is making them cut ties with non-believers and ostracizing any apostates.
Catholic King making infallible decrees is harmless compared to that.
Yeah, those are tiny. There are millions and millions of Catholics in every nook and cranny of the Western world, and plenty of Eastern crannies as well. The previous POTUS, often called the "leader of the free world" was Catholic. If you think the opinion of the Vatican holds no sway over the course of society, you must have never seen any videos or photographs of the massive hoards of people standing beneath the papal balcony all the fucking time, just trying to get a glimpse of some geriatric virgin in a stupid outfit giving a pointless speech in a language they probably don't understand. Confession is basically just emotional blackmail and psychic self-flagellation, not to mention they famously created the biggest pedophilia ring in known human history. Idk dude, seems pretty bad. And this is without even looking at the Wikipedia page, I can't imagine the innumerable horrors committed on humankind over the last two millennia in the name, and by the power, of the Catholic Church.
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"there's certainly enough ammunition in religion as a whole for anyone who hates religion to think that they're right."
Is a crazy way to phrase "there is evidence that supports their views"
Not really. It's an observation that most religions have some dogmatic and scriptural aspects that can be seen as either absurd or abhorrent.
Most large religions have been co-opted at some point in history by powerful people to do some terrible things.
If you were anti-religion, there's a lot of things to take shots at.
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"What do you mean? He watches me from the corner every time I'm masturbating."
Should've gone full nuclear: "Jesus watches while I fuck your daughter from behind"
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The Christian belief is as trivially obviously fake as Zeus and has done a lot of harm
No shit.
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Oh you are? Ok enjoy your block
Anarchy is just a stepping stone to fascism, grow up
My what?
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It always starts from the assumption that I'm an atheist too. They're all friends, by the way, so don't picture some kind of weird high-pressure pitches on the street.
Also I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to conflate being atheist and being anti-religious - my friend in this story however is in the "religion is ultimately the cause of every war in history" camp.
Anyway, very basically, I'd done something nice. Another work friend was talking about it, and my anti-religion friend responded with "see, he's an objectively nice person, no religion needed or anything". And it was at this point I revealed my secret identity, and the discussion began.
Just for balance, over my 44 years, I've also had a Scientology pitch, a Jehovah's Witnesses pitch (old-school knocking on the door style), and an uncomfortably high-pressure pitch from what I'm sure was one of those churches set up to scam immigrants.
But outside of those, the main people who have tried to change me have been friends with strong anti-religious views.
Ah, yes, well. Many people see the root of all evil not in money, but in organized religion, and that's sometimes hard to emotionally separate from the (perceived) irrationality of capital-R religion. So, yeah: in friend groups, I can see debates about religion that veer into proselytizing, although -- again -- people generally don't preach to the already-converted except in sectarian wars, which in the US have subsided as religious communities have solidified against the greater threat of atheism.
I grant, in any case, that even atheism can have strong advocates who try to convert people. I do think that it depends on who you are: being an athiest, I've never had an athiest pressure me about my religious beliefs, and have only been prosthelytized to by Christians... but that's to be expected, right?
