Oh dear...

[Cardinal Fang]

Hey, CF, I didn't know you are/were at Oxford. I was at Hertford from 1965; in those days we didn't have the blessed knowledge of the FSM to throw at the OICCU and other religious loonies, of which we had far too many.

Still there - and town not gown BTW

CF

[Corax]

I like to think that religious people can be saved from their religion, so if I am approached and have time, I do like to try and save them. They were coming to try and save me, so I return the compliment.

Jehovah's Witnesses are the usual ones who need saving. I can't help but feel a little sorry for them. Imagine actually believing that? It must be like suffering from a severe mental illness. I invite them in and offer them a hot drink, and then ask them to explain to me exactly how they ended up believing in their thing, who it was that introduced them, why they haven't managed to get out of it, etc.

These days I can't help but laugh when they approach, and the ones that know turn around and skedaddle.

I have the same opinion of those trying to persuade me to join their religion.

There's a nice JW that drops by every month or so (more often and with his son and wife, when the weather is nice, and he's even brought his visiting father too) that I have long chats with. He's almost convinced me to have a Bible study with him. The only stumbling block I can see is that I require equal air-time for the deal to go through, and he might not be used to that. Being able to have a monopoly on what the topic of conversation is makes it easy for them, so him knowing that I won't just sit there and nod might scare him away from such a formal agreement. We'll see.

So much of what he says is just plain childish and ignorant, that I have problems pretending we have any common ground to stand on when we talk. I have not hedged on the fact that I'm a strong atheist and think that the Bible is bunk, but I treat him with respect and we both enjoy the mental exercise.

I know that they (just like suicide bombers) are deluded and think that they're doing what's right. If I believed what they did, I'd do the same thing, so I find it hard to condemn them personally. The fact that the world, especially an educated, wealthy society like ours (Canada), still has people that believe that crap is what I have a problem with. I fight the root problem, not the individuals that are trapped in it.

At my last work place there was a JW and a Mormon, and when I quit, they both gave me their respective Bibles. They were both really great guys and I still have their Bibles. Since they both knew my thoughts on religion it was cool that they both independently thought that their last chance to 'save' me was to give me the word of their gods. It's the thought that counts- that's why my kid's 'art' is on my office walls and not Audubon or Bateman.

My love of sarcasm and eye-rolling still gets me in trouble with my family and friends when this topic comes up, but they soon learn that's it's nothing personal.

Keep up the good fight dude- it's for a good cause and it's fun. (Although sometimes the desire to do this... , is not so much fun.)


Cheers

[Arkaeon]

As a former practitioner of theology, I've had several missionaries from various faiths admit openly that they liked talking to / studying with me as a way of improving their game. Domestic missionaries often work on a sort of quota system from their church, so hours spent with me were credited to their efforts and improved their chances of working with others. I may have actually made things "worse" in the rationalist/objectivist sense overall as a result, but it was fun for me to play with them, and they enjoyed the exercise. Hopefully, I helped them see that their efforts were more of a political nature than a holy one, but, if not, I don't actually care so much. My lack of sympathy in general overrides any concern I might otherwise have that someone else may have been led into a wacky belief system as a secondary result. In religion above all else, "let the buyer beware." My own spiritual conclusions are so far out of the box that I don't know if anyone could embrace them, which is why I don't help start another church. FSM will do just nicely for now.

Curiously, since I embraced a sort of naturalist-shamanism philosophy and started "openly" accepting the accompaniment of ancestral and biotome spirits as "companions" to my "spiritual" presence, not one missionary has tried to talk to me about their religion, although I do nothing to suggest that I would be unreceptive to their message. I have actually tried to engage the local revolving door of mormon missionaries in positive conversation on more than one occasion. Street thugs turn away from me like I'm carrying the plague (I walk around town alone at night regularly). It's almost like they can sense the little platoon of imaginary friends that surround and protect me. It's so uncanny, it almost acts as proof that some kind of spiritual forces do indeed exist, and that I have tapped some mighty allies at last, even though they don't actually exist. I recently sent 2 "warrior elves" (I have 4 of these on tap) to drive away haunting spirits from a friend's house in the Netherlands, and the "ghosts" disappeared as soon as my nonexistent friends arrived to attack them. Maybe its just the Noodly Appendage clearing the way. Yes, I both believe and disbelieve in the spirit world at the same time. This is only a problem if one insists that reality and comprehension make coherent sense as we currently understand science, and I have given up that particular notion quite a while ago.

I think maybe the spirit world is actually a representation of a complex of electrodynamic-magnetospheric interactions similar to Tesla's idea of storing/transmitting power and information on the energy-envelope of the planet. These dynamics are almost always hopelessly misinterpreted by people who think they have received religious inspiration of some kind, giving rise to all manner of nonsensical belief systems even farther removed from the original misinterpretation.

The rule that seems to apply: "Like against like, and a monster knows its own kind."

Oh dear...