In case any of my readers are interested in doing that (and some of you are! I get your email all the time), here’s a WikiHow article on how to convert atheists. It’s very simple, and I can summarize it in one sentence: be very nice, and for the love of god, don’t talk about Christianity.
I’m not kidding! Every recommendation is about demonstrating how you’re a nice person, but if the atheist confronts you with any of their disagreements with Christian doctrine or mythology, you’re supposed to back away gracefully and avoid addressing any of their points. Let me just inform any of you proselytizers out there that this tactic would simply increase my contempt for your religion, so don’t bother. Thanks.
You know, I read the educational literature to figure out better ways to get ideas across to my students, and there are effective ways to communicate and inform. I’m trying to imagine doing a better job of teaching cell biology by forming a personal rapport with my students, being friendly and kind, but running away every time I’m asked a question about mitochondria. I don’t think it would accomplish any of the goals I have for the class.
Wait! I found another site that reveals what happens when Christians do talk about the specifics of their religion. It’s called PROVING THE INSANITY OF ATHEISM BY FACTS PHYSICS HAS NO FOREKNOWLEDGE, WHICH IS A FACT.
So physics could have never known in advance that man’s body could produce knowledge.
By knowledge we take the proper food to eat which then by our organs becomes blood, and obviously we need this to live because life is in the blood. Even if you eat or if the food becomes blood you are still dead. So what happened to evolution? Who knew in advance that after food becomes blood you need veins all over your body, so the blood can flow throughout your body and also that you need a pump to keep circulating the blood? Is this a proven technology or a myth of physics? And also who knew the heart has to keep pumping constantly otherwise you are dead? Do you put the food into your mouth or evolution does? You do. If you eat food you grow, but if you do not then you do not grow. What do you see here, that food makes you grow or that evolution makes you grow?
So physics puts the food into your mouth or your knowledge puts the food in your mouth? For food to become blood, you must have different organs working to form it. Every organ has a special workmanship in order to complete the foreknowledge of the personality, but again, not by physics because physics has no foreknowledge. The atheists claim it is by physics, however. So the atheists do not understand wisdom.
Welp, I sure am convinced.
I like how they tell people to “avoid intelligent atheists”.
I just finished a nice hard sausage and soft cheese lunch with some rye bread. Most of it was put into my mouth by a fork, after using a knife, except for one particularly reluctant lump of sausage where a sharpened mildly deranged penguin — kept tame by feeding her some of the cheese — was required. Ergo, a balloon full of melting rose bulbs put the food into my mouth.
Unlike the quote in the OP, some parts of the above is convincing. Other parts are plausible.
Are you sure the guide wasn’t written by an atheist after a quiet life?
Just show me the definitive physical proof of your deity or get lost.
Of COURSE Physics has foreknowledge. I pick up a rock, hold it out at arm’s length – and Physics knows it will fall to the floor long before I let go of it. Ergo, no god?
Lofty:
Hell, at this point, I would settle for some actual evidence of any gods, not just the sadistic genocidal misogynistic Abrahamic skydaddy.
Actually, I should have read the first link before commenting. I completely agree with it. I just wish the proselytizers who come to my door would act that way. Telling me how their lives are better because … is much more pleasant than they themselves, without even knowing me, condemning me to eternal hell.
I wonder if that physics essay would make more sense in Greek.
chigau:
We can always find out:
Er, no.
Food, food, food. Someone likes to eat. You can eat all you like, but if you don’t drink water now and then, all the food won’t help you.
But it is clear that that second source was “inspired”. It’s mushroom time on Vancouver Island?
Ogvorbis@6:
Frankly I would be impressed if they started with a coherent definition of what a god is, and why I should worship it.
Something learnt…
…by paying them money your entire lifetime.
I think this author used Bram Stoker as a technical reference. After the food becomes blood you’re still dead.
This conversion manual reminded me of my former classmate who converted to Islam because he made Muslim friends and wanted to be a part of their community. In this roundabout way, the article may be right – getting atheists to join the community of Christians may be more effective than convincing them of the truth of Christianity.
I suspect that religion has as much if not more to do with community then it does actual theological belief. Even in the extreme end of believers it is the community they feel with their god that in the end they can rely on.
That feeling is at the root of all their “on the road to Damascus” conversion stories.
It is true that you can not reason someone into a feeling nor can you guilt them into it either.
That need to convert others has the stink of desperation about it and is an attempt to hold on to their own feeling. It is an attempt to ease and deny their doubt when confronted with someone who does not share that community.
It is isolation and oblivion they fear the most.
It is whistling past the grave yard.
uncle frogy
Who knew in advance that my legs needed to be X long to reach the ground? It’s a miracle.
@Caine, 10
I suppose it depends on what you eat. I’ve never bothered to look into whether you could survive long term on high-water-content foods without additional drinking.
Ah, just figured out the loophole. Just eat ice. QED, atheists!!!!!!!111eleven1
Wow. The guy was having a stroke while writing the start of the first line. It’s all gibberish after that.
I am gonna guess that evolution selected against people who did not put food into their mouth (breatharians notwithstanding)
Hahaha the Wikihow community Q&A is pretty great. First question is “How do I stop Christians from trying to convert me, and learn to stay out of my business?”
The second one… seems to be saying… that only intelligent creatures can understand facts, abstract concepts cannot understand facts, and therefore facts cannot exist without intelligent creatures? I think they’re confusing fact and opinion.
It’s the old well refuted Plantinga concept that your senses aren’t enough for an organism (like a human being) to rely on them for proper information. You need an imaginary deity to translate…. The problem is, if the senses aren’t accurate, those who are prey are easily eaten….
Physics does this? I never heard ‘physics’ did anything. It is a field of study, not a sentient being. Wouldn’t have been “biology” or the “Gym at the Y.” None of those. It’s a long chain of events and one can start as far back in deep time as one wishes, or one could simply start with the (probably) immigrant farm worker, laboring at the field of an agricultural corporation, nurturing the plants developing from the seeds provided by a mega-international-chemical-and-seed-corporation. That’s where it “starts” in my mind… and it ends when my wife and I put the resulting food-stuffs into our pie holes and masticate it. I actually know many who subscribe to an “active god” belief-set of one sort or another. They don’t push such drivel. Don’t know who does.
No no; physics puts the lotion on my skin. Or is that the melted wax? Drippitty drip swift falls the whip, and the blood is a delicate glaze.
Of course I’m dead! Scramble my brains like an egg and hook ‘em out my nose; wrap me in linen and rub me in attar of rose. I’ll be right as rain, immune to all pain, and I’ll smell damn fine, too.
Presumably, the shadow knows. I rather prefer a bellows. Whoosh whoosh whoosh! goes the blood. The glaze becomes a flood.
Ah, I believe I see the problem! A simple error; it was the psychics who had no foreknowledge, and who were thus swallowed by the flood.
Stem to stern starts to burn mind the point of the liver; up for luck. Down!? Well fuck, now we’re up the red river. The blood starts to rise; a word to the wise- the first key is in the veins. You had best dig deep, for when you last sleep the cruelest god holds the reins.
Look Ra, I can nonsense too.
Wait, is that last bit a tweet by Teh Donald?
My usual response to “conversion” is:
Their response almost always is, “You’re being ridiculous.” They’re claiming it’s possible, and I’m “being ridiculous” for asking them to demonstrate it?
A brief moment of Honesty from the comments:”Avoid intelligent atheists. The more intelligent they are, the less likely these methods will work. If they are smart enough, it may even backfire and they may convert you. The best strategy if they seem too intelligent is simply to run away.”
I really liked that last bit…
vucodlak at 24: “Look Ra, I can nonsense too.”
Yes you can! But your nonsense actually is too coherent and even amusing and a little scary. And it rhymes! Too much like art and not really genuine nonsense that is truly meaningless, rhythmless and not even wrong.
Why are the Wikihow illustrations so big? Is that like ALL CAPS for the illiterate?