**If ** you think that your way is the right way. And you are genuinely worried that I am unsaved, and you’re not trying to convert me because your religion needs more followers, or your temple needs more money, or because unthinkingly you are doing so, and if I have taken the time to learn about your religion and understand it, and if I’m unhappy with my religion and don’t feel like I need answers, then it’s OK for you to tell me about your religion and try to convert me.
It is not OK for you to take over another country and tell them to convert.
It is not OK for you to go into another country and go to the poor and uneducated and give them something and *without educating them thoroughly * tell them your god is the best.
It is of course not OK to force me to change, that’s not a real change anyway.
It is not OK to come to my door, unasked and unwanted, at any time. It’s not and you may try and justify it as you wish but it’s wrong.
It’s OK, if I tell you about a personal problem, and you say, for example “May I tell you about Jesus Christ?” and I say yes, that’s OK.
No, in fact that seems to be a really silly notion.
Welcome to persuasion land.
What’s a significant method of persuasion? We’re not talking about a food for bibles program. I don’t see anything wrong with using those evil methods of persuasion on someone who might be down. As long as they’re not being exploited what’s the big deal?
I think I agree with the already stated view: While proselytizers annoy the hell out of me, I’ve always rather thought that, if one truly believes that the consequence of failure to convert is eternal damnation, that not only would it be moral, but morally imperative to try to convince others. If you know (or believe you know, at any rate), that a person is in danger, are you not obligated to try to warn him/her?
Of course, I believe they are wrong, but from their standpoint, wouldn’t the obligation to try to convince me still exist?
although i think that proselytizing is inherently arrogant (and i consider arrogance foolish, but not immoral per se), i do not think that it does a great deal of harm. for example, most lds converts do not stick around in the long run (you’ll have to do a bit of scrolling, but its there along with information comparing lds growth to that of other religions). i also think that most people that are converted to a new religion through proselyters were confused in the first place (sounds harsh, i know, but its just an opinion). also, correct me if i am wrong, but in regards to the hindu thing, i thought that you had to be born into india’s caste system (be born an indian) to be able to escape the grasp of maya and obtain enlightenment.
a) you can *prove * to me that the vacuum or encyclopedias is worth more to me than my old vacuum (or not)
b) they’re not really on the same wavelength. Vaccum or religion? Apples and alternators! A better question would be, is it moral for someone to come to my door, unasked, and unwanted, to try and change my political party. And the answer to that is: no.
We are now entering moral autonomy territory. Your status as a moral agent entitles you to make moral decisions for yourself. Using violence to convert the unpersuaded is an easy case. You are then treating the person as an object (objectifying them, as it were), which denies them any choice at all. In some cases, this might be justified–you have no moral right to murder me, and I’ve got a moral right to prevent you by any means necessary, even if you think murdering me is ok, or that you aren’t really murdering me.
OTOH, I have a right to decide for myself whether I care about eternal damnation (or if it exists, for that matter). My decision does not affect your rights, so you can’t morally coerce me into changing my mind.
What about giving me $500. It seems to take the morality out of the decision to some extent. I’m not really deciding for myself that I believe you (you’ll never know for sure that I do, and I probably won’t), but hey, for some amount of money, I’d probably say that I believed you because:
a. Then you would shut up.
b. I’d be 500 bucks richer–I could afford a dog to keep proselytizers away.
The problem is that the line gets blurry. What if instead of giving you $500, I tell you that I’ll let you keep your welfare benefits if you agree with me–otherwise, I will take them away?
Or what if you are very poor and I offer to give you enough money to keep your daughter from being forced into prostitution if you agree with me?
What if you are unable to feed yourself, and I offer to give you food and shelter if you will agree with me?
What if I tell you that unless you agree with me, you will be raped by the huge invisible monster that lives under your bed (when I know that there is no monster under your bed)?
If you agree in these cases, have you made a choice?
The real question then is when does my belief that your well-being is at stake override your interest in moral autonomy?
Hmm. . . interesting point. Since I consider the KKK’s message to be immoral, I suppose I must take the next step and acknowledge that spreading it is immoral, as well. Which means that I will refuse to participate in, or aid, its spreading. I don’t believe morality is relative, but I do believe that in most cases it’s normative only at a personal level – God is telling me to mind my own thoughts and actions, and never mind the other fellow (so long as violence doesn’t ensue – on that much you and I can agree). In the marketplace of ideas, hopefully the better message wins out in the long run.
Which also means, should a clansman come try to peddle his wares my way, I’ll feel free to tell him to take a hike. Just as I won’t have my feelings hurt if someone were to tell me to take my Christian message elsewhere.
So, no, I don’t have to accept that their proselytizing is moral, but that doesn’t mean I get to force my morality on them.
Actually it’s not. While you can split semantic hairs, the premise is that it’s OK to talk to me and try and tell me why your point of view it right. It’s not OK to try and coerce and bribe me into thinking that way by providing schools and services. While you can use the word “persuade” in either case, it’s pretty clear that, to my point, the concepts are distinct.
No, that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. At least parts of the thread are. We’ve discussed “I’ll dig you a well, while I’m here I’ll build a church and tell you about my religion”. We’ve discussed hospitals that are the province of the believers only. There’s nuns out giving vaccinations. There’s nothing altruistic about any of those endavours.
I have a real issue with people who think it’s their moral duty to convert me. Where does their obligation stop, after all? Wouldn’t it be the moral thing for them to send me to a reeducation camp, until I get the picture? Inconvenient for me, to be sure, but better than hellfire and eternal damnation, no?
A basic premise of America – crudely put, of course – is that one religion is as good as another. Proselytizers don’t believe in that basic premise – they believe their religion is higher and better. And once they’ve gotten that idea in their heads, look out – theocracy or religious warfare is on the horizon.
Jesus did call upon people to spread the Gospel (good news) of the Kingdom of Heaven, but He very clearly specified that people were not to be hassled. He instructed his disciples that if people weren’t receptive, they should move on. It’s not supposed to be a brow beating, but an announcement. A man should convert only of his own free will.
What if you ask me, “Why should I buy your vacuum cleaner – can you prove it’s better than my current one?” and I reply, “I am sure it is, but I have nothing that you would accept as proof - just my own conviction that these are good vacuum cleaners.” Is his action immoral then?
In fact, what if, unbeknownst to the vacuum cleaner salesman, you have a truly outstanding, ultra-high-end vacuum cleaner at home, and the one he’s peddling is, as far as you can tell, not superior to yours but vastly inferior. Is his action immoral then?
You put forth the OP asking about conversion in general. Not when one party is more educated than the other, et cetera. Besides, While what you say is likely the truth, we cannot be certain. What constitutes an act of attempted conversion? How many take place in Europe and the U.S., relative to the number taking place in the Third World, with its popularized imagery of the Christian Missionary?
Secondly, I don’t feel that one party having superior education shifts the blame. The convertee is the sole point of decision. Some have been known to convert without overt provocation, in fact. Simply being more educated than someone doesn’t mean that you can manipulate them as if they had no free will.
That’s not the same thing as simple conversion, though. That’s passive coercion. Again, I’m talking about the general case.
If they truly believe that what they’re doing furthers the welfare of those whom they’re helping, and they do it at a cost to themselves, then it is the very definition of altruism.
You may disagree with their religion, but that doesn’t make their motivations any less unselfish.
Hee. “Immoral in your attitude”. That’s funny. It’s completely irrelevant to the point I was making, since we were talking about the morality of the act, but it’s funny. “Well, you baked all the cakes for those orphans, but you shouldn’t have been drooling over that construction worker across the street while you were serving them.”
And that’s fine, if it takes the form of witnessing e.g. a meeting in the town hall to explain why the new well was dug by those crazy americans. Advertising said meeting also being OK.
If, however, you say you’ll only open the new hospital if everyone in town is baptised, well, you’re going to the special hell, IMHO. With the people who talk too loud in the theatre.
And they’d be perfectly within their rights to do so. It will, however, expose their “charity” for the spiritual blackmail it truly is.
“beggars can’t be choosers”, I know. Doesn’t make it any classier to do, though. True charity is that which doesn’t ask for anything in return.
We’ll probably get into more semantics here, but I suppose it begs the question of “what does moral mean?”. Is it a fluid construct, or is it something that should be self-evident to everyone?
I’ve always used the definition which treats morals as an absolute.
It is immoral to murder someone.
It is not immoral to sleep with your cousin.
The latter is considered wrong for lots of valid reasons, but I’m able to accept that some cultures don’t find it inapporpriate. Therefore, I wouldn’t call it immoral, even though I find it repellant.
In that meaning of the word. I’d say that there’s nothing immoral about the KKK disseminating their ideas. I wouldn’t even call their hate-mongering to be immoral. One could make an argument that their self-important and narrow-minded views are valid. (For example, what if they were a independant, homogenous country? Would they be considered immoral if they had no need for hate crimes and such?) As it stands it’s wrong and disgusting, but not inherently immoral.
I don’t tend to see morality issues as debatable. There’s got to be a word for those things that can be reasonably debated as being right or wrong. I don’t think morals are the term.
In such a case, I see it as immoral to use duress as a persuasive tactic. Just as I see it as immoral to use charity to further your goals.
Some people see the Christian dogma as being every bit as immoral as we see that of the KKK. So for you to rationalize the apparent hypocrisy between the two concepts by calling one immoral because the underlying belief is immoral, it seems to leave anyone who diagrees with your religion free to call you immoral.
No value judgements for me, you could accept that flexible use of the term moral, it’s different than my definition.
Thats the point. They aren’t doing it at “cost to themselves”. They see it as an investment with a return on that. Its in the best interest of the church to have more follwers. Long term, it’s not done out of charity.
There’s probably a long argument to be had of their motivations. How skeptical is it to think that the interest of the church overrides the interest to “save” these people. I don’t know. But I think it’s naive to assume that the long term benefit of the church is not at least part of the equation. As such, it’s not altruistic, therein lies my problem. They are exploiting the needy. Hope we’re not too far off point here.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree; I think that, several exceptions aside, most religions, even large and organized ones, are mostly populated with true belivers.