Atheistic Evangelism: What Atheists share with the Religious

The mind of the "evangelist" (atheist, theist, or otherwise):

"I am so absolutly and unassailably right that I am the embodiment of righteousness, itself. And as such I have both the right and the obligation to condemn, and if possible, correct, all these ignorant, wrong-headed fools around me."

But evangelism isn't really so much about changing the minds of others as it is about living in the delusion of one's own absolute and unassailable righteousness. The evangelist is actually feeding his own ego on the presumed ignorance and unrighteousness of everyone else.

It's basically a kind of psychological addiction. An addiction to the illusion of self-righteousness.

From everyone's perspective, are Atheists just as thirsty to get people on their side as Christians are?

I don't think it's useful to speak about these categories of people as if they are heterogenous and instead ask about individuals. And yes, there are individual non-theists (whether they are atheists or something else) that are just as zealous about their position as some Evangelical Christians are. That said, the teachings associated with Evangelical Christianity, being more standardized, have a more unified/focused angle on conversion as a goal. It would hardly surprise me if a similar group existed for atheists in my country, but I am currently unaware of one.

Religious people, do you think everyone should be religious?

No, but it's inevitable that everyone is religious... in both relevant senses of what that word means. Everyone is religious in that there is some cause or practice they are very devoted to. Everyone is also religious in the sense that they have some sort of framework within their worldview for articulating their values and weaving meaningful narratives into the days of their lives.

Besides, I think the relevant contrast you were going for was atheist and theist. Atheistic religious paths are a thing. Though honestly, the contrast between any of these things is shallow at best until we start talking specific paths or traditions.

Or, why do people need to adopt your way of life?

They don't, and they shouldn't. I'm not much for preaching, but as a pluralist, one could say I actively preach against this sort of cultural hegemony and monotony. I want diversity, thanks.

If you're religious, how much peer pressure went into you becoming a member of your religion?

None whatsoever. That's just not how contemporary Paganism (Druidry or otherwise) works. Besides, we don't have membership cards. Hell, I joined OBOD, and I didn't get a stinking membership card from them, even! The nerve!

I believe that some feel compelled to evangelize on behalf of reason and scientific literacy.

RedDragon94 said:

From everyone's perspective, are Atheists just as thirsty to get people on their side as Christians are?

Click to expand...

Not even close.

RedDragon94 said:

If you are an Atheist, do you think everyone should be an Atheist?

Click to expand...

Nope. Never have, never will.

RedDragon94 said:

If you are an Atheist, why do people need to deny God's existence?

Click to expand...

They don't.

RedDragon94 said:

If you are an Atheist, how much peer pressure went into you becoming an Atheist?

Click to expand...

Absolutely none. It was a personal transformation based on a lack of verifiable evidence for God's existence.

From everyone's perspective, are Atheists just as thirsty to get people on their side as Christians are?

Answer: No. Unlike christians, atheists do not have an agenda.

If you are an Atheist, do you think everyone should be an Atheist?

Answer: A theist is someone who believes in an imaginary god. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in an imaginary god. Atheist is a word that should not even exist. Do I think everyone should throw their gods and man-made scriptures into the garbage and live their life in reality and according to facts? Yes.

Religious people, do you think everyone should be religious?

Answer: Judging by their scriptures, which command that they convert everyone or kill them...I would say yes.

If you are an Atheist, why do people need to deny God's existence?

Answer: People don't need to deny something that doesn't exist. In the history of our species, not one person of any faith/religion has ever produced one piece of evidence of any god's existence. Again, you can't deny what doesn't exist.

If you are religious, why do people need religion? Or, why do people need to adopt your way of life?

Answer: Religious people believe all people need religion/god because they have been brainwashed into believing that they need it. And so they, in their deep indoctrination (brainwashing) believe everyone else needs it too. They believe people need to adopt to their way of life because their scriptures tell them to convert others.

If you are an Atheist, how much peer pressure went into you becoming an Atheist?

Answer: Absolutely none. I was a die hard evangelical jesus freak for 13 years. When I found out christianity wasn't true based on evidence, I became an atheist by default. I even prayed to god/jesus to keep me from becoming an atheist and to help me find evidence to prove christianity true. When my prayers went unanswered, that proved to me that god/theism was a fraud.

If you're religious, how much peer pressure went into you becoming a member of your religion? (This includes major influences in your life. Friends & family.)

[FONT=Helvetica, sans-serif]Answer: When I got religion, I was pressured into it by the fear of hell. Same as most people. The real good news, is that such a place doesn't exist. [/FONT]

Lucian Hodoboc said:

There are no nonreligious people. Atheists are just religious people in denial. Atheism as an idea destroys itself because it is irrational.

Click to expand...

These points get made by someone every time this subject comes up (which is pretty often). They are always refuted, but they always pop up again in another thread -- or even in the same thread.

Not believing in that for which there is no evidence is the very denotation of "rational." Would you call your disbelief in flying elephants irrational? Are you in denial of flying elephants?
Think about it. Theists believe in something with no empirical evidence, so wouldn't it be the theists who were irrational?

Because we have an innate desire to want our fellow humans to share our happiness in the afterlife.

Click to expand...

What evidence do you have for this innate desire? What evidence do you have for an afterlife?
Not all religions even believe in an afterlife.

RedDragon94 said:

From everyone's perspective, are Atheists just as thirsty to get people on their side as Christians are?

Click to expand...

I don't need anyone on my side. I am constantly being pressured into accepting Christianity again, though.

RedDragon94 said:

If you are an Atheist, do you think everyone should be an Atheist?

Click to expand...

Should is a strong word here. I think the world would be a better place if everyone was an atheist. I'm not going to make a fuss about it though.

RedDragon94 said:

If you are an Atheist, why do people need to deny God's existence?

Click to expand...

You don't need to do anything. Just keep it out of government.

RedDragon94 said:

If you are an Atheist, how much peer pressure went into you becoming an Atheist?

Click to expand...

None. Everyone I knew at the time pressured me into the opposite, actually.

Valjean said:

These points get made by someone every time this subject comes up (which is pretty often). They are always refuted,

Click to expand...

Sure they do, but the rebuttal arguments are irrational, so the rebuttals fail to achieve anything.

Valjean said:

Not believing in that for which there is no evidence is the very denotation of "rational."

Click to expand...

First of all, there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God. The problem is that the methods atheists apply to investigate the existence of God they do not apply to other areas of existence. Most atheists have no problem with accepting that a papyrus writing of a historian from ancient Greece actually portrays real events that happened in ancient Greece at that time, but doubt that four long Gospels written by 4 different people and several letters written less than three decades after Jesus can be considered proof of His life. That's called being inconsistent with one's skepticism.

Valjean said:

Would you call your disbelief in flying elephants irrational?

Click to expand...

I'm not calling atheism irrational because of the atheists' disbelief in God's existence. I'm calling atheism irrational because the atheists are alive. A rational being who is aware that it is trapped in a short existence between two infinite periods of nonexistence and his life has no objective purpose would rationally conclude that suicide is the only thing that made sense. "I want to live and experience" does not make rational sense because that experience is meaningless in the grand scheme of eternal nothingness.

Valjean said:

Theists believe in something with no empirical evidence, so wouldn't it be the theists who were irrational?

Click to expand...

You seem to be rather oblivious of the vast amount of evidence for God's existence. I'm curious as to find out to what degree did you get involved in investigating the accuracy of every single miraculous event that has happened and science cannot explain. I'd also love to know if you've actually given the time to experiment God's existence like you would experiment anything else (in a laboratory, for example), according to certain rules?

Valjean said:

What evidence do you have for this innate desire? What evidence do you have for an afterlife?

Click to expand...

In order for me to provide evidence, I need to know what you would accept as evidence and to what level is your skeptometre set? Are you going to dismiss any piece of evidence of supernatural manifestations I bring as coincidences, trickery or placebo? If so, I should ask you what evidence you have that you exist.

RedDragon94 said:

From everyone's perspective, are Atheists just as thirsty to get people on their side as Christians are?

If you are an Atheist, do you think everyone should be an Atheist?

Religious people, do you think everyone should be religious?

If you are an Atheist, why do people need to deny God's existence?

If you are religious, why do people need religion? Or, why do people need to adopt your way of life?

If you are an Atheist, how much peer pressure went into you becoming an Atheist?

If you're religious, how much peer pressure went into you becoming a member of your religion? (This includes major influences in your life. Friends & family.)

Click to expand...

People are welcome to delude themselves into believing whatever they'd like. Personally I would prefer that people used reason and logic to determine their beliefs, simply because illogical and unreasonable people tend to cause more problems in society.

As for peer pressure to become an atheist? I experienced no pressure whatsoever. Any peer pressure I encountered came from people pushing me to be religious.

Lucian Hodoboc said:

There are no nonreligious people. Atheists are just religious people in denial. Atheism as an idea destroys itself because it is irrational.


Because we have an innate desire to want our fellow humans to share our happiness in the afterlife.

Click to expand...

"There are no nonreligious people. Atheists are just religious people in denial. Atheism as an idea destroys itself because it is irrational."

What a phenomenally ignorant statement. Not believing in something because there isn't sufficient verifiable evidence to believe is the exact OPPOSITE of irrational.

RedDragon94 said:

From everyone's perspective, are Atheists just as thirsty to get people on their side as Christians are?

If you are an Atheist, do you think everyone should be an Atheist?

Religious people, do you think everyone should be religious?

If you are an Atheist, why do people need to deny God's existence?

If you are religious, why do people need religion? Or, why do people need to adopt your way of life?

If you are an Atheist, how much peer pressure went into you becoming an Atheist?

If you're religious, how much peer pressure went into you becoming a member of your religion? (This includes major influences in your life. Friends & family.)

Click to expand...

From my perspective, a way of life comes from within. Micromanagining labels applied on others means little to me. I've seen micromanaged labeled "atheists" act more "Christlike" than micromanaged labeled Christians and the vice versa. Christlike being the character attributed to Christ in texts. If a particular way of life isn't lived within, it causes both subtle and larger destructions to oneself and others. That particular way of life is "religion" within.

A lot of those other questions won't be able to be answered without a strong sense of individual self-awareness. A lot of it is personal hobby, a lot of it is the desire to control/conform others, a lot of it is the desire to feel and want to be accepted by others(if you don't believe such and such-you're not welcome in our social ring.) Many don't have this awareness quite yet, and nothing wrong with that. Pressure, trying to fit in/ appease others/have the approval of others and all of this stuff accounted to my youth of indoctrination coming from many directions at which point I was blind and couldn't see it.
Breaking those shackles has been quite wonderful for me now.

In other words, to sum up: behind all of the unnecessary labels people give themselves and others, all of the beliefs, it is ultimately someone's nature/character/inner morale that is important in my perception.

Valjean said:

Atheism isn't a religion or a cause. Atheists aren't commanded to proselytize -- we have no doctrine to promote.
I suspect Christians, knowing in their hearts that their beliefs are without foundation, are overreacting and misinterpreting a response to challenge as recruiting.

Click to expand...

Then why interact on this site if you have no belief or anti-belief to promote?

Why does the challenge even matter?

blü 2 said:

Some, like the Four Horsemen (Dawkins, Hitchins, Dennet, Harris) and others, are opposed to religion as such. I'm not. Many of my friends and relatives are believers, and they're intelligent, decent, reasonable people. (I balk at fundamentalism, though.)

Click to expand...

Okay.

blü 2 said:

I'm not technically an atheist, but I think being a decent person is far more important than holding any particular belief.

Click to expand...

Okay.

blü 2 said:

I don't need to. I come to RF for the pleasure of arguing ─ and if you don't argue it's much harder to learn anything. Elsewhere I don't mention religion much at all.

Click to expand...

Okay.

blü 2 said:

None.

Simply, the more I tried to work things out, the more I found it impossible to think 'God exists' is an accurate statement about reality. These days I realize the concept of a real god is incoherent.

Click to expand...

I guess if that's what you think. To me the opposite is true.

Altfish said:

Show me the evidence and I'll change my mind.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure people have before and you've just dismissed it with evolution. With me, I adopt evolution into my worldview.

Altfish said:

None, absolutely none. I used to go to Sunday School and church until I was about 13, then I started thinking about things and it appeared to me that it was a scam. So I gradually stopped going to church. There was no pressure from anyone.

Click to expand...

So, just wondering, were your parents at all religious?

LuisDantas said:

Which atheists and which Christians?

Click to expand...

In general, do Atheists and Christians share the common trait of attempting to win people over whether it be a command or not?

LuisDantas said:

What people are you talking about?

Click to expand...

Religious people.

Revoltingest said:

Some are, but I'll give one reason why Xians are the thirstier of the two.....
They believe that they're saving us from eternal Hell.
Atheists have no less compassion, but we lack the offer of this profound perceived advantage.

Click to expand...

Yeah true.

PureX said:

The mind of the "evangelist" (atheist, theist, or otherwise):

"I am so absolutly and unassailably right that I am the embodiment of righteousness, itself. And as such I have both the right and the obligation to condemn, and if possible, correct, all these ignorant, wrong-headed fools around me."

But evangelism isn't really so much about changing the minds of others as it is about living in the delusion of one's own absolute and unassailable righteousness. The evangelist is actually feeding his own ego on the presumed ignorance and unrighteousness of everyone else.

It's basically a kind of psychological addiction. An addiction to the illusion of self-righteousness.

Click to expand...

Usually that kind of attitude comes through in a variety of ways, ruins the whole thing.

Quintessence said:

Besides, I think the relevant contrast you were going for was atheist and theist. Atheistic religious paths are a thing. Though honestly, the contrast between any of these things is shallow at best until we start talking specific paths or traditions.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that was what I was going for.

Quintessence said:

They don't, and they shouldn't. I'm not much for preaching, but as a pluralist, one could say I actively preach against this sort of cultural hegemony and monotony. I want diversity, thanks.

Click to expand...

K cool.

Quintessence said:

None whatsoever. That's just not how contemporary Paganism (Druidry or otherwise) works. Besides, we don't have membership cards. Hell, I joined OBOD, and I didn't get a stinking membership card from them, even! The nerve!

Click to expand...

Now that's funny. Atheistic Satanists are more organized.

RedDragon94 said:

In general, do Atheists and Christians share the common trait of attempting to win people over whether it be a command or not?

Click to expand...

Generally, Christians do, while atheists don't really.

But that is quite a wide brush to use. There is not a lot of useful information with so little nuance.

LuisDantas said:

Generally, Christians do, while atheists don't really.

But that is quite a wide brush to use. There is not a lot of useful information with so little nuance.

Click to expand...

I suspect that a very large percentage of theists, especially more devout ones, are quite unaware of the nontheists around them in real life. Because they don't feel any need to talk, much less proselytize.
So their impressions are formed by blabber mouths on the internet. Who often are nearly as opinionated and vocal as any religious person.
Tom