Campfyre Stories

It’s been over a year since I’ve been accosted by someone proselytizing about religion.  This does not mean, however, that I have not been accosted, nor that people haven’t been proselytizing.  In the past week, two things happened that made me roll my eyes more than a little.

The first was the 9/11 "Truth" brigade.  This is one conspiracy that I’m intimately familiar with because of the time I spend on Digg.  I try to avoid it in real life, though, because I know the vehemence that these people bring to their belief in this overall conspiracy.  So when I was standing at the bus stop last night, I was approached by a man who asked me, "Have you heard the Truth about what happened on September 11th?"  He had pamphlets and was trying to push one on me. 

"I am very familiar with the whole thing," was my response, and it’s true.  Not only do I know all the arguments for their side of the story (controlled demolition, PhDs and scientists who, though they are theologians and biologists, claim to know more about engineering than, say, engineers…), but I also know all the counter-arguments and am pretty familiar with the NIST report.  The only bit I’m not entirely clear on is, outside of Alex Jones making copious amounts of money from this conspiracy theory, what they want that will make them feel satisfied.

The response I got was a big smile and "Fantastic!"  I think that he assumed that he had found another believer, when that really couldn’t be further from the truth.  But in the interest of not getting into a heated argument at a busy bus stop, I declined to correct this assumption.

The other encounter I had was a few days ago, and it wasn’t actually me directly, but I found the whole thing rather disturbing.

Now I’m a very tolerant person.  I don’t belittle people for their religion or lack thereof, I just don’t want to be "converted" and as long as you respect my beliefs, I will respect yours and we can discuss.

I was on the bus, sitting across from a single dad and his (I’m guessing) 9 y/o know-it-all kid.  The kid was snotty and entitled, but as I listened (I wasn’t listening in, but you couldn’t avoid hearing them), I learned some of the reasons why this kid wasn’t a happy person, and he is going through a very hard time, through no fault of his own.

Dad and son were trying to make reasonable conversation with each other when a man, who was getting off the bus, distracted dad by pointing to something that had fallen to the floor of the bus.  When the dad leaned down to get it, the man pushed a pocket-sized pamphlet into the kid’s hand.  It read, "Is there really a God?"

It was an atheist test.  And propaganda that was passed on in an attempt to woo this child from whatever religion he has thus far experienced.  Honestly, it wasn’t so much that this pamphlet was given to the kid that bothered me, it was the WAY that it was done.  Underhanded and sleazy and, seemingly, trying to "save" the kid from himself or his family.

The thing for me is that I do believe that people should be able to speak their mind or to go out of their way to share information with others, but it HAS to be a choice on the part of the people who are listening.  I don’t think anyone should be forced to listen and I don’t think that parents should be distracted for long enough for you to attempt to subvert their child.

It seems like there is sometimes this idea that if you believe strongly enough in something, then it makes you correct.  Faith-based reasoning rarely holds up for me.  Even this atheist was operating under some assumption of faith.  There is a difference between a lack of belief in a Higher Power and a belief in a LACK of a Higher Power.  This man was the latter, and I think this is a relatively new breed of atheist.  I don’t like it.

I don’t want to have to fear that going out in public means that I have to go out of my way to avoid attempted conversions - to or from anything at all.  And the problem that I have is that these situations are not confined to organized protests or marches, these are people who are catching their opportunity whenever they feel they can by blending in with the crowd.

And, for me, I start off with the assumption that, despite your beliefs, despite your eccentricities, you’re no different from anyone else…  but that moment when you slip through the crowd and tell me that you’re one of the select few, who knows the Truth, that’s the moment I write you off.

It’s really kind of a shame.