Why do religious kooks feel the need to help me “see the light” and convert to their religious beliefs? I practice freedom of religion. I make no attempt to convert them to my beliefs. Why do Mormons stop me on the street? Why do Jehovah Witnesses knock on my door? Why did they kill so many Jews during the Spanish Inquisition unless they converted to Christianity? Lastly, why can’t Ed Conrad stop posting his creationist drivel all over the Internet? What’s their motivation?
The basic attitude is “I’m right, you’re wrong and I’m going to save your soul whether you like it or not”.
Some religions make proselytizing part of their set of core good behaviors, like doing good deeds. The ostensible reason is to save your soul. You, of course, are not part of their religion only because you are ignorant about its wonderfulness, and they are fighting that ignorance :rolleyes:.
In my opinion, however, the real reason that those at the highest levels of any religion promote this practice is to build their own influence and power. The more people who are listening to them directly and following their lead, and the more people they can be said to represent, the greater their relative power. This makes religion rather similar to politics. At the local level there may be sincere practitioners who think they are doing you some good. At the highest levels, it’s all about power and influence.
Roddy
I think in it’s in our nature to want people to agree with us, or to feel the same way we do. Otherwise, we feel insecure – it’s not easy to “agree to disagree”.
Obviously I’m not talking about your major extremists – just your average, “why don’t people believe/not believe this and this”, etc.
Think of it this way: Imagine you were a right miserable bastard, perhaps even a criminal, and you hated yourself. Pretend you tried to change your ways and maybe did okay for a while, and then backslid and did stupid things again. Maybe you got into drugs, or heavy drinking and couldn’t stop.
One day, someone told you something that suddenly made it possible for you to change. Your despair and self-hate are eased, and you actually start to like yourself. You stop the drugs and drinking and you start doing something useful with your life. You start working with kids, teaching them how to avoid going down the path you did. You start realizing that you have the respect of the community around you, and self love to boot.
Wouldn’t you want to share? Wouldn’t you want to tell everyone around you about this terrific Something that helped you out so very much?
That’s not even touching the theology, of course, only the social and personal support networks that any church provides. Add in the Christian theology that teaches that people around you, even those you love very very much, are going to burn in hell for all eternity without Jesus, and frankly, I think it amazing that there are any Christians who DON’T proselytize. If you knew your mom was about to drive off a cliff and die a fiery death, wouldn’t you beg her to change her route? (That’s pretty much Exhibit A on my list of Reasons I Suspect Most “Christians” Don’t Believe Their Own Religion.)
If you see their light, it reassures them that their light is not a mirage.
You could turn it around and ask why religious people don’t do more to convert others.
I have friends who are deeply religious. Sometimes I find it weird that they are so accepting of my atheism. In their view, I’m likely to end up in hell. Don’t they care?
Yeah, I find proseletyzing to be perfectly rational for religions that feature spiritual rewards/punishments and free will. If you believe in Heaven and Hell, it’s pretty much your duty to do what you can to get people from the latter to the former. You’d be a right bastard not to.
(Of course there are more and less effective ways of proseletyzing, with yelling from street corners being one of the least effective. But adherents of all sorts of belief systems go about their causes in really stupid ways, like signing petitions, buying Priuses rather than more fuel-efficient normal cars, and donating shoes to Africa to “show that they care.” That kind of boneheadedness is not specific to religion.)
For the same reason a cold virus makes you cough and sneeze; to spread itself. Religion is a psychological virus that subverts people into extensions of itself; they try to convince you to convert because as an agent of that religion that is their function in life, to spread that religion.
I find that if you say “Thank you for your interest, but our current spiritual provider is adequate for our needs. If we experience a drop off in service, I will make sure to contact you”, they look nonplussed and sidle away quietly.
Agreed.
If you thought someone was going to be tortured for eternity, wouldn’t you try to prevent that?
I think this is better suited for IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Mind you, not every religion (or every denomination of Christianity, which I assume is what you’re referring to) assumes that those who don’t believe as they do go to Hell.
Or maybe they don’t like you as much as you think they do and are really looking forward to you burning in hell. 
Well, it’s not much fun imagining Hellfire if it’s only happening to people you’ve never met…
There are one minute versions of this but here is the entire (5 minute) Penn Gillette take on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG-tkQ_Q2w
Here’s the one minute version-
“If you believe people are going to Hell or not getting Eternal Life, how badly do you have to hate someone to not warn them?”
Also, in Matthew 28 & Mark 16, Jesus is reported to have told His followers to take His message to everyone.
bizerta, here are the offenses you listed:
Why do Mormons stop me on the street?
Why do Jehovah Witnesses knock on my door?
Why did they kill so many Jews during the Spanish Inquisition unless they converted to Christianity?
Lastly, why can’t Ed Conrad stop posting his creationist drivel all over the Internet?
~
Can we agree that one of these things are not like the others? What doesn’t belong and why?
Well, some of us are playing the long game. I’m a Christian. If I mention church or God or, heaven forbid, Jesus, to my sister, she snaps shut like a paranoid oyster. Shutting up and trying to live what I believe, however, has meant that she sometimes asks questions about how what I believe informs my decisions and actions, and, since she asked, she’s open to listening to the answers. I don’t know if she’ll ever convert, but beating her over the head with the Bible certainly wouldn’t have done any good, either.
I grew up in a small town, went to Sunday School at my parents’ Anglican church and absorbed rather more of the morality than the theology. In short I declared myself a non believer and stopped attending at around the age of 13. I haven’t wavered since. My Mum had converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism as an adult and as such still believed that non believers went to hell. Incidentally she wasn’t just worried abiout me but also her mother, who had never even been baptised let alone been a churchgoer as an adult. Our vicar of thirty years (for whom I have a great deal of respect still) reassured her that God knows who is good and didn’t make church going or expressed belief the criteria for staying out of hell. Actually, being a modern sort of Anglican I doubt he even believes in hell for anyone.
Are you sure that this is really the view of those specific people? I’m a practicing Catholic, and “people who are not can get saved too” was a recurring part of my religious training - heck, we have Feasts for St David (King), St Solomon (King), St Esther (Queen), St Judit… That particular point is one in which the views of the specific religion/denomination vary a lot, and of course the views of an individual don’t necessarily match those of the religion/denomination 100%.