To the Christians out there watching this,
please stop evangelizing to me.
I know it's your duty to fix me.
But don't. Don't do it to me.
Don't do it to any other atheist
because you do it really badly.
You wrongly assume you're telling us new information.
Do you honestly think we could live in the United States
and not know about the Christian myth?
You will never hear an atheist say,
"Tell me more about this Jesus".
"I've never heard of him!"
We know about Jesus. We know about God,
we know about the crucifixion.
We all just think it's silly and childish.
Hell! We probably know more about your religion than you do.
Maybe we should be teaching you about Christianity.
Actually, why don't you sit there while I try to convince you that Hogwarts and Voldemort are real?
And then we can have a chat about how annoying it is
when someone tries to convince you that a fairy tale is true.
You wrongly think you have Good News to share.
Telling me I'm bad and sinful, and in need of saving
doesn't work when I know I'm a decent human being.
Telling me I'm going to be tortured for eternity If I don't agree with you isn't love.
That's a threat.
No one needs to rescue me.
The only way that talking point is effective is if I have low self-esteem
which I don't.
You're kind of like telemarketers:
Interrupting my life uninvited, trying to sell me something I have no use for.
I really just want to put all of you on my Do Not Call list.
And when I tell you my problems with what you're saying, you don't listen.
You're worse than Comcast.
You wrongly think anecdotes are convincing.
We're atheists.
We know better than to be swayed by emotion.
So your personal story of finding God,
as touching as it may be,
does nothing for us.
I'm immune to your sob story about Jesus.
Sorry!
Same thing goes for stories in the Bible.
You know, telling me about Jesus, or Adam and Eve, doesn't make me go,
"Oh that makes perfect sense!"
No, I'm really thinking, "Oh my God, I can't believe you fell for that shit."
It's never a two way conversation.
I don't know what the formal definition of evangelism is,
but it tends to mean you talk
while I have to shut up and listen,
which is really the worst way to convince someone about anything.
I mean, in that way, you're really no different than those annoying preachers who show up on college campuses
and yell at students about sodomy, and Jezebels, and fornication.
Those guys are only interested in conversion,
not conversation.
If you disrespect me so much that my opinions
and my rebuttals to what you're saying go ignored,
then why should I have to listen to what you're saying?
You would never be okay with evangelism if it went in the other direction.
If atheists sat you down to tell you about the life of Charles Darwin
and how only we can give ourselves meaning,
you'd be royally pissed off
and annoyed. And you'd feel like I'm talking down to you.
And you'd probably be bored.
Now, imagine us knocking on your door to tell you all that while you're busy doing something else.
Welcome to my life.
I don't think you really care about whether or not I convert.
I think a lot of Christians evangelize for themselves.
It makes them feel good, like they think they're getting brownie points from God.
They could care less if I change my mind, because they're too busy getting off on the sounds of their own voices.
It just doesn't work.
You know what I've never heard Christians say?
That they found Jesus because someone knocked on their door and annoyed the hell out of them.
Literally.
Usually, Christians will say they had a born-again experience.
They encountered Jesus; they felt God; they knew he was real.
To which I say, "Okay,
let me have that same experience".
I don't need you interrupting that process.
Tell you what.
Go away and just pray for me in the privacy of your own home.
I mean, you believe in prayer, so let God do the heavy lifting.
You never have the guts to admit when other Christians are wrong.
I know that's not an argument as to whether or not Christianity is true,
but if you want me to be a Christian, you're telling me to be part of a club
that includes Mark Driscoll, and Pat Robertson, and Rick Warren, and Ted Haggard, and so on.
Why the hell would I want to do that?
Why would I want to read a book that led to their behavior?
I promise you that for every decent Christian you name,
I can throw a dozen horrible ones right back at you.
And maybe you're thinking, "That's not fair, some atheists are jerks too".
And you know what?
You're right. Some atheists are jerks.
That's just them.
Atheism isn't some church that they are part of. There's no book telling them to act that way.
They are isolated assholes.
And I promise you plenty of atheists would say the exact same thing,
I like Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher. Personally, I'm a fan of both.
But I promise you there are a lot of atheists out there who will joyfully trash them both.
Good luck finding Christians who are willing to speak out against someone like Rick Warren.
Even a lot of liberal Christians and progressive Christians are quiet
when it comes to admitting that homosexuality is fine and is not a sin.
If you can't admit how your faith often makes the world a worse place,
then you're part of the problem.
I just don't trust people who evangelize to children.
Christians have vacation Bible Schools and Sunday Schools. And they're always trying to get kids to go to church.
You know why? It's because those kids are old enough to question what they're being taught.
And I'm not talking about teaching them values and ethics.
I'm talking about teaching them bible stories as if they're real.
There's a reason that Creation Museum advertisements target children.
There's a reason to have animatronic dinosaurs there.
They're going after the kids who will believe anything you tell them.
I would say the same thing about atheists, by the way.
But we don't have a habit of doing this.
We have no problem trying to convince you we're right
when you're old enough to think for yourself.
Try introducing the Catholic idea that the communion wafer is literally the body of Jesus,
literally,
when that person's 21. I dare you. Let see how that goes.
If you have to convince children that your religion is right,
it's probably because your beliefs aren't worth taking seriously.
So, after all this,
how should you evangelize? I'm not saying you should just stop completely, but there is a right way to do it.
Here is how.
You make your contact information publicly available.
And that's it. Don't call us. We'll call you.
Or, how's this? You ask me if I want to discuss religion with you.
And if I say yes, we have that conversation.
And if I say no, you respect my time and my wishes and stop bothering me.
That's how you should do it. That's the only way you should do it.
My name is Hemant Mehta and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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