[lbo-talk] A time of doubt for atheists

snitsnat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Sat Jul 23 08:18:23 PDT 2005


At 01:07 AM 7/23/2005, Autoplectic wrote:
>On 7/22/05, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Matt -- my advice is ignore these people. Aggressive
> > atheists are worse than Jehovah's Witnesses. Soame
> > thing, really. snitsnat in particular seems to think
> > that all Christians live in Florida.
>
>--------------------
>
>Whoah, wtf is an aggressive atheist? I've encountered far too many
>Jehovah's witness in my life and they're pretty hard to beat in terms
>of belligerence when it comes to a/theology and what one
>researcher/writer has called 'the arrogance of faith.' Hell, even
>Mormons don't come close to such fervor.
>
>Ian

Well, there's my (not) MIL, a Mormon who likes to try to convince us that we should get married. we should because we're in a time of crisis in the world, and two people should be married, not shacking up and living in sin. Part of this has to do with celestial marriage (I think that's the term) the Mormons are into. Also, it's not that they believe in the Rapture, it's that a woman needs a _mormon_ husband to lift the veil in order to be ressurected.

back when I was studying religion, I had JW's come to the door, so I engaged them in a discussion. I told them I was an atheist, thinking that would keep them from proselytizing and hoped we could at least have reasonable conversations about it. I was a young mom, home with the kid, going to school in my (heh) free time, so I was looking for real conversation with intelligent beings. We had interesting conversations, but man, they came to the house about twice a week after learning I was an atheist. I was studying feminist theology at the time, dipping into a bit of the anthropology of religion as a result, and eventually moving on to Whitehead and process theology. This was weird stuff to them and I think they thought I was Wiccan or something, what with all the talk of "when god was a woman".

I learned after that: if you really don't want them to come to your house frequently, it's not a good idea to tell them you're an atheist. Apparently, turning an atheist around is some kind of prize trophy and they work really hard at it.

Better to say you're Jewish or Catholic, I'm told. :)

Kelley

"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."

-- rwmartin



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