Just have to get this off my mind!
Today, I was visited by two christian teenage girls trying to “spread the word of god”, as they would probably call it. They held a bible in my face and asked whether I, too, thought that “this book” is not being held high enough in these times.
My honest reply was that “this book” was of no worth to me and that I personally detest the christian religion (yes, using those words, but in a friendly voice). Upon being asked what I believed in, I replied that I was an atheist. That initiated a conversion taking a good 30 minutes.
To be fair, I’ve thought a lot about my personal values and my own mental image of the world. Unlike most people, if something contradicts with my personal model, I am willing to reevaluate this model. True, this is a bold thing to say, the statement itself being subject to my own standpoint, but when your mental explanatory model hasn’t conflicted with any of the experiences in your life for a long time (and you’re actively looking for such conflicts and are actually willing to see them), I think you can assume your model is amongst the more down-to-reality ones.
They started the discussion by asking why I despise christianity, which I honestly answered by explaining that I believe that christianity glorifies weakness. Protect the weak, love your enemies (not in the “love to hate” sense as far as I understand it :D), don’t envy others, be modest and so on. They seemed baffled, as this is not a mainstream reply in our christian social conditioned world.
Being asked why, I explained that this is evolution. Survival of the fittest, human nature. So there we were, discussing evolution vs. creation, a favorite amongst theists vs. scientists. They objected that humans have a natural tendency to be friendly towards each other, which I told them was just another part of evolution, social behavior, forming of groups for increased chances of survival.
They seemed to turn 180° with that and brought up that “these groups are now all falling apart” and that “god is the only solution to bring them together again”. Not wanting to rudely reply that their statement doesn’t really make sense, I just followed up telling them that I’d hold a human in higher esteem if he, for example, didn’t murder others because he truly understood the value of life instead of just being friendly because he wanted to play his role as a christian and because he is afraid of going to hell.
This couldn’t be countered, so the conversation continued by them telling me that science hadn’t found the link between ape and man and that there were no half-man-half-apes (”monkeymen”) running around. So god must have created humans. By mere chance, there was a documentary on TV just the other day that meticulously explained the development of modern-day humans (if interested, see here: Human Evolution at Wikipedia) which I recited, effectively killing this direction of the discussion, too.
Then they tried to sell me on christian values. That christianity could bring an end to conflicts in this world. I replied that I thought of conflict as something useful and inherent to humanity. Trying to make me feel guilty, I was explained that this is easy to say for someone in a wealthy, peaceful country and that someone suffering in Iraq right now would want to rip my head off for saying that. I accepted that I might hate this view when I was in that situation, but that I hold it true nonetheless. They reference Gandhi, who, so I was told, said that if everyone would strictly follow the 10 commandments, world peace would be upon us. I admitted that there is not much evolutionary progression in modern warfare when someone presses the famous “red button” having strong and weak beings alike be blown to pieces.
Attempting to hit the dent I had given, I was told about how they believed in that the bible has to be followed exactly, eg. no sex before marriage and no divorcements. I objected and said that I thought differently. Making it obvious, I asked whether divorcement is such a bad thing if the marriage is a living hell. As it turns out, in their beliefs, this wouldn’t happen if both partners were christians. Stating that I think that people change over time and that just acting as if they understood each other was not my idea of a honest and happy relationship, the second girl became angered (I had only talked with one of the girls, the other standing silently in the background) and hissed that I naturally was able to say that without putting any thought into it. I didn’t get the chance to comment because the first girl resumed her discussion seamlessly.
I was asked how christianity could have spread as far as it has if it was all just a lie. My personal belief is that religions are subject to evolution just as much as alive beings are. Ideologies battle each other in people’s minds and the strongest continues to spread itself. I told them this.
Going for the same point again, they asked me why I thought these two girls were standing in front of me, spending their time to spread the bible. Again, trying to be honest, I told them that in my humble opinion, they were misguided and wasting their time. They asked why I thought people were devoting their entire lifes to god. I told them that from my standpoint, these were all blinded souls that turned to god because they might not be able to life without some imaginary backing or they just didn’t want to go against the flow.
They instructed me that Jehova’s Witnesses were all about going against the flow, being looked down upon for their fundamentalist beliefs. That in WW2, not a single Jehova’s Witness had armed itself or helped the Nazis. They queried whether I didn’t also think being christian would make people more strongly uphold their values and that Atheists sold out as soon as danger approaches.
The opening sentence seemed like a blunt manipulation attempt (in terms of “if you’re proud of going against the flow, join us, we’re known for going against the flow!”). I can recall that this didn’t annoy me long enough to formulate any reply, thought 
Next they stated that intelligent youths often ask older people about their decisions. My manipulation alert sensor was already on stand-by, so as soon as I heard the term intelligent people, I was about to object that this was a blunt attempt to coax me into choosing their standpoint to appear intelligent. I said nothing in the end.
The misery of the world was then cited, and that god would be coming very soon now. That even science predicted the end of the world. Yeah right. About a month ago, after watching Al Gore’s famous presentation about global warming, I had researched myself what scientific prognostications had been made about the future of our planet. Most assumed that within 50 years, the polar ice caps would be gone, causing the gulf stream to cease flowing which would cause a new ice age for europe. I truthfully relayed that information. One thing I didn’t was that, during my research, I had also found a list of end-of-the-world forecasts that had been made since virtually about the dawn of time and by every generation of man since then.
Accepting my bit of information, they told me that god was now coming and he was the only way of being saved. I simply told them that I didn’t think so and that mankind will survive because that’s what mankind does best. With this, they told me that they were sorry to hear that and offered me a flyer about Jehova’s Witnesses, which I declined.
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I’ve been thinking about what I should have replied if I just were a little bit more brave and whether I should have attacked their beliefs instead of just defending mine. I think, in a honest discussion, both sides should enter the discussion ready to change their views. In retrospect, I don’t have the feeling that these two girls were willing to even consider their own view as being flawed. It looked more like they were walking from door to door in an attempt to infect the minds of as many people as possible, imitating the flu. Their standpoint seemed to have the consistency of foam, it bent, moved and adjusted all the time trying to match anything I showed to value.
While this shallow discussion hasn’t shaken my beliefs at all, what’s really unsettling is that these teenagers are as a matter of fact unknowingly training how to indoctrinate people. They’ll get better with every person they talk to and discover, over time, more and better replies to common contradictions that now still baffle them because they attack their standpoint in unexpected ways.
These are the exact people I wouldn’t want next to me. They don’t have the backbone to just object when they disagree, instead they continuously reformulate their ideas and even invert their standpoints silently, never really being ready to defend their standpoint if they believe it is right and never exposing their actual views for discussion in fear of them to be challenged. Normally, over time, they could reflect on themselfes and be ready to stand up to others (call that personal development), but I fear they will just idealize their evasive behavior and see their salvation in everyone else also becoming too timid to criticize the other’s beliefs — in everyone just becoming christians.
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