And how does that effect you?
Why does it need to “effect me”?
Your post demands an answer to a nonsensical trick question.
Try reading the posts you’re responding to. Two people have already pointed out your lack thereof.
My Daddy had two rental properties on one street. Between them was a house owned by the LDS. They housed their missionary kids in it. The guys were quiet and clean.
Much more so than who my Daddy always ended up renting his houses too.
And helpful as heck. Anytime Daddy was readying the houses to re-lease the guys always offered him help. He took them up on many occasions. They would never take any money he would offer. They’d just tell him to donate it to his church or theirs. He would bring them garden produce. They took that, well enough.
As far as I know they never gave him the spiel or offered a free Bible.
They were just nice and kind young guys.
I’d still hide if they ever found my house.
Good grief, did you read your cite? It says that the law is murky, courts have reached a variety of conclusions, and ends by saying
The Supreme Court has often affirmed the reasonableness of “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech in the door-to-door context. It thus seems that courts would be likely to uphold laws designed to limit solicitations to daylight hours or laws affirming the rights of residents to post signs indicating that they do not wish to be disturbed by solicitors.
It seems pretty clear that either a homeowner or the joint owners of a private road can post legally-enforceable signs indicating that door-to-door proselytizers are unwelcome and trespassing.
(And that some laws requiring solicitors to register with the municipality have been overturned on free-speech grounds. But that’s about a third party interfering with your right to approach me, not with my right to tell you to leave me alone.)
This is nonsense. I am a militant atheist. I do not see the need to talk to anyone about it unless they ask. But then I would strongly argue my views. Not going to bring it up in some casual conversation.
“Mind your own business” is what my opinion on the topic covers. I’m not going to argue anyone into my (lack of) belief system.
And it is precisely the opposite of religion.
My brother is a born-again christian and he has exactly the same approach, except for him, it is religion.
I understand the need for framing atheism as “religion”, but sincerely, it is not, not at all. It is lack of belief, not a belief.
no they are not.
no it isn’t.
religion ISN’T THE SAME AS PROSELYTIZING. FUNDAMENTALISM IS NOT THE SAME AS CHRISTIANITY. Maybe if I shout it will penetrate.
Unless this is a Monty Python reference, I’m going to have to question this.
Why is my lack of belief some sort of religion? I don’t believe in god. The end. That’s all there is to it. I also don’t believe in Santa, or the Tooth Fairy.
It’s not a religion, but it’s a belief system. Desiring to impose your belief on others isn’t a religion but it’s still obnoxious.
I think we are misunderstanding each other. I am happy for religious people to do whatever religious people do. That is their choice. I am a militant atheist and I do not proselytize. I am happy to be who I am, and even when the subject of religion comes up I am happy to talk about it. I’m just not going to try to argue someone who is a believer into my point of view. I will, of course tell them and maybe argue a bit, but without an expectation that they will join me in lack of belief. That is a private matter for them.
But I will argue that atheism is not a religion. I mean, how can it be? It is a lack of belief. Belief is the founding stone of religion. You need to believe to be religious. Atheists don’t know (because evidence is absent ) -and don’t care.
Agnostics are on the fence.
OK, I get your outrage after a re-read. I should have phrased that better. No, I do not think religious proselytizers and fundamentalists are the whole of christianity, and my wording implied that that is what they are.
I meant simply to highlight my views about atheism, not broard-brush wider belief systems.
So I apologize @Ulfreida
Yep, I’ve lived in this house for >18 years. We maintain our private road, and have signage posted that says there’s no trespassing. Our one neighbor in particular loves calling the police for anyone ignoring the signs.
Atheism isn’t a belief system, it’s the lack of belief in god(s).
Many atheists do have some kind of moral framework (such as humanism) which serves some of the purposes of religion. Many atheists believe other stuff (such as the scientific method, or superstitious remnants of religion, or…) that’s not a moral framework, but helps them understand the world. Many atheists are non-believing members of major religions, because it serves the need for community and ceremony, provides a good-enough moral framework, and it’s what they grew up with. I’m both an atheist and a practicing reform Jew. (Not all religions focus on belief, that’s a Christian-centric view of “religion”.)
But atheism isn’t a religion. It’s nothing like a religion. It’s just the lack of belief in god(s).
I said it wasn’t. And would guess that the large majority of atheists are more “whatever, man” than aggressively anti-religion. It’s the aggressive ones that I would call believers – they believe that not only are they right, but that religious adherents are stupid dupes of a pathetic fantasy who should be deprogrammed or at least, insulted at every opportunity. But, of course, such assholery is that of a minority.
So, don’t call it belief. Call it hatred. That’s closer.
The atheists I know who are aggressively anti-religion are just pushing back.
But you said that atheism is a belief system. It really isn’t, it’s the opposite, the lack of belief in god(s), nothing whatsoever more than that. Where I live (Germany), more than half of the population identifies as non-religious, and a lot of them were brought up in non-religious families and never confronted with religious beliefs, so they probably wouldn’t even identify or think of themselves as belonging to a (fictional) community of atheists. It’s just their default, and they probably very rarely think or even talk about it . Btw., our first open atheist chancellor was Gerhard Schröder in 1998, and so is our current chancellor Olaf Scholz. It was a non-issue in both cases.
I’m not so sure about the latter thing. I’m pretty annoyed there is no god and sometimes filled with existential dread. Also, my interpretation is that atheists often feel they do know, with certainty, just as well as they know pink unicorns aren’t real. It’s agnostics who don’t know, and most agnostics I know don’t care. I don’t know and I do care, so I’m somewhere in the middle. (I’m certain there is no all-knowing, all-seeing, all-caring being, but I don’t know if that’s fully atheist.)
To answer the OP, the answer might be once a week or so, or hardly ever, it’s tough to say. I’m close friends with a Presbyterian minister and because of my interest in philosophy and religion, I ask him a lot of questions about his faith, and I don’t think he ever answers any philosophical question without some statement about God. I have no doubt he hopes by talking about these things with me, I’ll eventually see the light, but I don’t feel our friendship is dependent on it or anything, and I don’t think he loses sleep at night because we’re atheists, so, hard to say.
Here’s an example. There was a moral hypothetical posited here on the Dope (would you take a billion dollars in exchange for dying in five years?) and I gave the more or less selfish answer, so I asked him what he thought. And his response was Biblical. “God says blah blah etc.” This didn’t bother me. He’s just answering the question according to his worldview.
His answer also made me feel better.
Is that proselytizing? I feel like it’s a grey area.
Another data point: first half of life in North Germany, second half in South West Germany (in a region where we mainstream Lutherans jest that the Piet Cong has patrols).
I have never been actively accosted, visited or cold called by any religious congregation. I see JW, scientologists and various other small religions and cults at information desks in pedestrian streets, but they strictly wait for people to approach them. Presumably because they know there‘d be massive blowback if they pestered passers by - that‘s simply not done in Germany; we know that people not minding their own spiritual business has led to religious wars. Commercial leaflet distributors, on the other hand, do approach passers by occasionally, but their mission is just to pass on their material.
There is a lot of outreach efforts of small churches, but they only publish invitations (in the local paper‘s event‘s column, mostly), i.e. they want to attract people to come of their own.
I know the religion/denomination of a very small proportion of my acquaintances, mostly those who are active in their church and were in the local paper re a church fête, or because they mentioned they‘d be booked for a time slot because of a parish council meeting.
Maybe not for Christianity as a whole, but definitely for the regions I mentioned. Or at least they keep electing people like this.
Look at the current split in the Methodist Church for example, a church I’d never have considered very radical.