Alright, you all. I’ve just abandoned almost everything that is near and dear to me. I have lost all my friends, save the people from my school I see occaisionally in the dining center. I am at an emotional low point because of all the newness. So when I fill out “No” on your survey, as to whether or not I desire a personal relationship with God to get a free drink, you feel the need to tell me how fuffilied I would feel if I just opened myself to the Lord.
Damn you, and I realise the irony of this phrase. I will not prostitute my views about the universe to expand my social circle. And witnessing at me won’t help. And I can’t even explode at you, or even be too rude, because you are friends of my roomie, and I desire harmonious relations.
So, you are horrible for trying to recruit when us freshmen are at our weakest.
Wow. Soul pimping for a free Pepsi. That’s a new low.
Good for you for sticking to your guns.
Oh, have fun with them, Robert, like I did with the Campus Crusade for Christ when I was in college. They adopted me as their token heathen, and I soon found they loved it when I said shocking things to them, just to make them blush and giggle.
Buy a copy of The Satanic Verses and leave it out in your dormroom in plain site everytime this person comes over for a visit.
And start dressing all in black and red.
Or you you could “Celebrate Diversity”.
A big part of being in college is being exposed to new and different points of view. Just don’t embrace anything with a sloppy wet kiss until you feel more solid on your feet. The Marxists are going to try to get to you, too.
Sounds like Eve has the best attitude. Have fun.
Oh, robert, robert, robert…
You will find that harmonious relations with your college roommate are, at best, a cyclical thing. Regardless of best intentions on both sides, one of you will do something that annoys the other, usually incessantly. And then the annoyed one, convinced that the other does the annoying thing solely to drive him crazy, will begin to do something calculated to annoy the original one. And so it escalates. College dorm rooms are the Cold War in miniature. Blowing off his CCfC friends is the least of your worries.
Worst-case scenario, however, is sharing a room with a political opposite during a presidential election year. You both sleep with knives under your pillow at least through the middle of November. 
jayjay
Yeah, don’t sweat pissing off the roommate. You don’t HAVE to be best of friends with him. Worst case scenario, one of you moves. Usually you just wind up living around each other.
In fact, I say just run with it. It’s really fun to toy with loonies. I’m sure you can think of something more subversive than the old “fire breathing Satan” bit, though. As long as they’re not people that really matter to you (personally, academically or proffessionally) and you don’t do anything that gets you arrested it should be okay.
Hmmm, tactics for dealing with unwanted evangelical types.
You could do what a friend of mine did once, and put on your deepest, e-e-evilest voice and say "Fools don’t you know? Your side lost!" Adding in a completely differnt high voice, “And evil is loose in the world!” could add nicely to it, or you could get a friend to contribute the second line.
If you’ve got time, there are any number of religious debates over in GD, as you well know which provide wonderful logical arguments. One which I haven’t seen over there but which I might resort to myself these days is pointing out the number of people who’ve been turned off Christianity by tactics such as theirs, then reminding them of Christ’s words about stumbling blocks. A non-Christian using scripture against a Christian can be a particularly effective, if slightly underhanded attack.
Then there’s my current tactic-of-the-moment, which I decided on after getting witnessed to by one too many Christians a few months ago. Let them have their say, then ask how they’d feel about joining the Episcopalian Church. If I recall, you’re not Episcopalian, but I am, and the bishop has made noises about increasing membership in the church. I figure if these people are asking me to join their denomination, I can ask them to join mine. For you, robert, I suggest you use any denomination but theirs, although Islam or Buddhism might also work well, if you want to go for shock value.
What? You guys thought I was some sort of sweet, innocent, Bible-thumping Christian? I am (well, maybe not Bible-thumping), but . . . 
CJ
Note: This whole post is somewhat, but not entirely tongue-in-cheek.
Ah. Some things don’t change. Thanks for the support, people. Bascially, at home and on the board, I knew the rules. Here, I’m a stranger in a strange land, and I really don’t want to piss off the guy I may be needing notes from in the future. The Gideon society made an appearance, too. Them I respect. Just quietly handing out bibles makes far more of an impact than witnessing.
Does your school have those guys who stand at the corner with a Bible and just shout a bunch of stuff, and don’t listen to you or answer your questions, just holler and scream?
I remember those people Opal. One particular loon was shouting that the school was evil because there was graffiti in the bathrooms. I couldn’t stop laughing. The best part was that no one stopped to listen to him no matter how loud and vlugar he got.
As for the OP, I would just ask him to never witness or preach to you about religion unless you specifically ask him to do so. If you can get him to sign something that gives you “free hits, wedgies, or noogies,” from each occurance of him violating your person in that way then that would be even better.
Isn’t there some sort of a federal requirement that there has to be one per campus? dorkusmalorkusmafia (thank any Deity around for cut and paste!), I like the way you think. A nice civilized agreement about “what we agree to disagree on” would probably be a lot better than anything I suggested.
He I made friends with one of them evengelical types when in college.
He tried to convince me I was going to hell, I tried to convince him he was wrong and after a short while he gave up the preaching and we found other things to talk about. A good fellow who was ill prepared for the outside world as he had been sheltered by his religious friends and schooling.
His views on what the rest of the world was supposed to be got pretty shattered but he was a good and decent friend. And made me realize the word Stink in substitute for a curse word is pretty damned hilliarious.
“What the stink are you trying to say?”
Alright, you bastards. Now it’s personal. Ran into a friend of mine from work at the diner today. 1 year older than me. Softmore. When I knew him… I’m an atheist. I disbelieve. When I knew him, he wasn’t an atheist. Didbelief wasn’t worth the effort. Now…
It started innocous enough. Ran into buddy from home in the dinner line, struck up a conversation, went back to meet his friends. Chatted a little. “Cru”, the organization that went after me earlier, was brought up. “No, not really. I’m more of the ‘Obnoxious Atheist’ type,” I replied in response to their querey. All of a sudden my buddy and his buddies were looking at me.
The rest of dinner was a 4-way pile-on about religion. I gave as good as I got. They through out martyrdom (they died for their faith) lies about evolution, which I smacked down, and as I left, they asked where the universe came from. I asked where God came from. While they were puzzling it, I pointed out that if God didn’t need a cause, neither did the universe. My buddy’s buddies were blank. Two of them were biblical literists; I didn’t expect much. But my buddy… I saw you stop, and blink, and think. And then say, “I don’t really follow your logic. Maybe you can stop by at the meeting tonight, and ask someone there.”
You followed my logic. And then you stopped.
The worst damn thing is that I can’t be too mad at these people. If I could recapture my previous worldview of religion as an evil mind-destroying mental virus, I would be cool. Alas, this board has proven otherwise. But, damn, its creepy to see a friend I knew having been converted. And trying to convert me.
robert, buddy, you don’t need any help from us, you’re doing just fine! Props for sticking both to your own honest beliefs and to your newfound (well, newerfound) conviction that other people’s honest beliefs are worth respecting too. Hope your friend eventually learns not to be scared of thinking things through, whatever his own beliefs end up being.
(And I agree with you about the nastiness of using people’s loneliness or homesickness as a recruiting mechanism. A couple decades ago, in my senior year of high school, one of them got me a few weeks after my father died, when I could barely disagree with anyone about anything for crying. What, you couldn’t just put an arm around my shoulder and say “How awful, I’m really, really sorry”, you had to try to get another notch on the spine of your Bible? Girl, that was just selfish, and after nearly twenty-two years I still resent you when I think of it.)
Oh, man. Funny story. Was chatting with my neighbor dormmates when the topic of alcohal came up. I mentioned that I did not partake. Immediately the three people in the room assumed that I was devoutly religious. I got two flyers for church orginizations. And a lecture apparently ripped off of Internet Infidels about how religion was internally inconsistent, and silly, too. So, don’t feel bad, dreamer and ilk. We’re just as bad.
Oh, yeah, I’m now a member of the Virginia Tech Freethinkers Society. Go, me.
Heh…if it’s any comfort, my devoutly Catholic mother (who, since I’ve been reduced to using the family WebTV to post after my computer died, has basically ended up incidentally watching all of my internet activity) says all of you folks are a bunch of godless atheists.
I laughed at her. She was miffed. But she’s known I’ve been at least agnostic for the last 10 years, so she has no basis for shock.
do people who actually use the phrase ‘godless atheist’ ever think about it?
What a waste of education dollars.