I have yet to see an atheist who is anti-Shinto, anti-Buddhist, anti the various Chinese religtions. In the US it is common to identify religion with Christianity and god with the Christian god. Being Jewish it pisses me off that so many evangelical Christian’s default position is that you either believe in Jesus or are an atheist.
And I assume you are aware that the call to proselytize comes straight from the Christian Bible, and is not something some extremist sects came up with. It doesn’t bother me, I can out argue these people all the time, especially JWs. What does bother me is the transition from “I believe this by faith” to “I believe this, so it is true, so you who don’t share my beliefs had better live as if they are true or else I’ll call the state down on you.”
And I’m well aware that this rage is not just directed to atheists and non-Christian religions but to the wrong type of Christian also.
I once told a client that I wasn’t christian. His reply, “sorry, you don’t look jewish”. When I told him I was an atheist I thought his eyes were going to pop out.
I never had that problem because I do look Jewish. But I told the first set of JWs who came to my house that “this is a devout atheist household” and they looked scared and skedaddled.
I’ve seen a lot of those here over the years, in fact.
I consider myself an atheist Buddhist. Depending on what sort of Buddhism you practice, they aren’t mutually exclusive.
This conversation is reminding me of two evangelical groups from my college years: Jews for Jesus and Nichiren Buddhists.
Many evangelicals believe that, for example, Catholics, are not Christian in any real sense of the word.
I’m always amused when my evangelical Christian friend and my husband (a former Catholic, now atheist) start ranting about Catholicism with each other, united in their disgruntlement for completely different reasons.
“Well, I’m not very good at it.”
I just had two lovely young LDS men come to my door this week, and two Jehovah’s Witness women last week. And the contractors who redid my bathrooms were very open about how they were Christian believers who prayed before starting work every day, but they didn’t do any actual proselytizing aside from leaving a pamphlet on their last day of work.
This thread makes me idly think of a few things. I was brought up in a mainstream (ELCA) Lutheran church, and they taught me that “proselytizing” means trying to get believers from other religions to convert to your own, and that it was a no-no. “Evangelizing,” on the other hand, means trying to spread Christian beliefs to non-believers. This was framed as “sharing the Good Word” and our pastor encouraged us to do that by being good Christians who lived their beliefs, not by preaching to people who were unreceptive. Evangelism of some kind is a central tenet of all Christian belief. The idea is that you are supposed to carry on Jesus’s message and works.
“Jews For Jesus” aren’t Jewish in their beliefs; they’re (theoretically) converts from Judaism to a specific kind of aggressive Evangelical Christianity.
Because I know that the people who come to my door are doing so because they believe they’re following God’s Word and saving my soul, I’m kind to them if I answer the door. I know that abuse or contempt is catnip to them because that means they’re Suffering For Their Faith - just like Jesus! Also, it takes much less time to just say no nicely and shut the door.
I’m now an atheist, but I feel no need to try to talk people out of their beliefs. I’m not contemptuous of religious beliefs, but I do push back against the assumption that the US is a Christian nation, and I fight against attempts to entrench religious beliefs in publicly funded spaces. I don’t think my non-belief is tantamount to telling believers that they’re stupid, just as I don’t take offense to the knowledge that they believe I’m destined to be tormented in Hell for all eternity.
I think this is my evangelical friend’s philosophy. Even though we talk about his God a lot, I don’t really feel like he’s trying to shove his beliefs down my throat. He’s just being honest about how he thinks about these bigger questions we all face. And I often find his advice very helpful even if I don’t trust The Bible as the source.
I never tangled with Jews for Jesus, but I think it’s pretty evident by their name that they’re converted to Christianity.
I did get involved with the Nichiren Buddhists though, and that was a trip. I was aggressively pursued to attend their service, which was mostly chanting the same thing over and over, and afterward I got a big pitch about how if you chant, all of your desires will be fulfilled (this included material things, so basically The Secret.) He followed up with me several times after that, but I politely demured.
I was new to Buddhism at the time, but even then I was a little stymied about a group of Buddhists who thought pursuit of desire was a good idea. The Four Noble Truths guide almost all Buddhist traditions, and central to the Four Noble Truths is the discovery that the pursuit of things you desire is the root of suffering. I won’t get into a No True Buddhist tangent here, but Nichiren was… odd, in that context.
This reminded me of the only time I ever got proselytized. Two middle-aged women in old-fashioned plain dresses (you know the kind) knocked on my door, and first thing they did was asking me “What do you think is the most important person in history?” I connected the dots and asked back “You want me to answer Jesus Christ, don’t you? Are you Jehova’s witnesses?” They nodded, and I said “No chance here, I’m a die-hard atheist” They asked back “So you believe that everything happens by chance?” And I said “Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I think.” They immediately said goodbye and left, with a slight expression of contempt, without even trying to hand me a Watchtower issue.
I used to be a die-hard evangelical Christian in my youth, and I annoyed the shit out of everyone around me, so whenever I have to deal with people like this I think, “Paybacks are hell.”
In my defense, I was twelve.
I used to give rides to a teenager from an evangelical sect. Nice kid. She was fairly low key about her evangelism.
I was… Not. I used to take my Bible to class with me.
Atheism is not a belief system. There’s no system involved. There’s no belief involved.
It seems to be very difficult for many theists to understand that – the structure of their own belief systems is so embedded in their lives that the idea of one just . . . not being there . . . doesn’t want to come through.
Atheists sometimes have belief systems, if what you mean by that is moral and/or ethical systems to help structure lives by. But those belief systems aren’t atheism.
I understand that just fine.
– FWIW, what I generally say to proselytizers who come to the door is “I consider religion to be a private matter” (followed immediately by walking away and/or closing the door.) The people who show up here generally are willing to take that for an answer, and go away again, at least for some time. I did once have a couple of Mormons ask somewhat persistently if there was any work they could do for me; I had plenty of work, but I wasn’t comfortable either with the persistence, or with taking their labor when I disagreed so vehemently with the reasons they were offering it, so I turned them down.
Yup.
I don’t, for that matter, get publicly (or even particularly privately) upset about all the specifically-Christmas celebrations put on by mulltiple local towns, often at least partially on town property. It’s an area where there probably aren’t enough members of other religious faiths to take the time and trouble to organize such a festivity of a different religion; I’m certainly not going to do it. There are also, however, a number of town celebrations put on by various towns at various times of year that have nothing to do with religion.
I wonder what they’d do with “the first person to weave a basket”?
Though, admittedly, that isn’t technically part of “history”.
I suspect that most of them, especially the leaders, were never Jewish in faith to begin with, and are just trying to fool people into converting.
The founder of J4J claimed to be born Moishe Rosenstein. It was revealed he was born southern Baptist and with a non-Jewish sounding name.
Lol, my honest knee-jerk answer to this would be, “Friedrich Nietzsche.” Probably wouldn’t go over well.
As @Mops already mentioned, religion in Germany generally is considered a private matter, and being randomly asked by strangers “What church do you go to?” like I gather is a common question in the USA, is seen as rude and intrusive. Doubly so at the workplace, where spouting your religion would soon leave to a stern conversation with your bosses. Instead, in small talk and to break the ice, we like to ask about football (soccer), our ersatz religion, so “What is your club?” is a perfectly cromulent question you can pose to strangers.
At the time, I first had the urge to answer “Sid Vicious”, but that would’ve been of no use because I would have had to explain who he was…
If i have the time, i often talk to them. I am interested in religion and in various people’s experience with religion. They are offering to share that with me. Mostly, they are polite. Mostly, the arguments they make are off-target. (I had a pair of very pleasant Mormons try to sell me on their newer testament, because the New Testament is so great, for example.) I did once have a guy tell me that he wished he would see me in the afterlife, but he wouldn’t, because i will be in hell (and he won’t be, i guess), but he was an outlier.