Did your school have a lot of religious proselytizers?

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Today at school, I was chatting with a friend of mine while walking through the hall, until two students from one of the campus's Christian organizations approached us with the intention of evangelizing to us. This wasn't the first time something like this has happened to me. A few weeks ago, as I was waiting for a ride after class, a woman approached me seeking to spread the "Gospel."

Anyway, my friend, who is an atheist, told them that he did not believe in God, and then he and one of the proselytizers began discussing things of a religious nature. Then, the two proselytizers started praying for my friend right in front of him.

I stood aside and waited for the conversation to abate so that I could continue conversing with my friend, but the conversation kept going on and on and my class was about to start, so I just left him with the two proselytizers.

Has anyone ever had the same experience in school? What advice would you give for anyone who is faced with such a situation?

Tell the "Jesus is the answer" people you are not asking any questions (unless you might actually have some) ... and then just walk away.

Trying to reason with them about their proselytizing is usually nothing but a waste of time.

Oh boy do I love religious proselytizers. Check out this incredibly offensive kid's site: Don't scroll over the lamb on the top. It's creepy.

I usually argue with them for fun.

I might point out inconsistencies in the bible.

Or I might even question the validity of the bible in the first place. "How do you know that the bible is the word of God?" and then use inconsistencies as support.

Or I might present various reasons why the Christian God can't logically exist such as the problem of evil.

If I'm pressed for time, I might use blasphemous profanity. Jesus *insert animal name + profane sexual act here* Christ often works.

"Jesus *goat + sexual act* Christ, I'm late for class!" *graceful exit*

My usual response to proselytizing is to recite angry poetry in Finnish...or, rather, it would be if they ever actually tried xD I think my dress sense scares them :p

I love the guys. They stand outside my college, and preach. I nod politely until they inevitably slip up scientifically, and then I tear them to shreds. No-one gets to abuse the second law of thermodynamics, least of all a third year "Scientist" preacher.

Would you might giving an example or two? I went and looked that up, but all of that is "Greek" to me.

In laymans terms, The second law means that the amount of usable energy in a closed system should decrease over time. Concentrated, useful energy gets converted to diffuse useless heat energy.

So, many Religious apologists and New Agers (I'm less familiar with the latters claims) say that this means that surely life on earth couldn't go for a simplicity, to complexity, because thermodynamics demands that the reverse happens; vases break, but do not reassemble.

The problem is, they are ignoring that big nuclear reactor hovering in the sky above us. The sun gives us a huge amount of useful, concentrated energy, which organisms can use directly to turn simple material into complex sugar (photosynthesis).

While it might appear that all this "free energy" is cheating the second law, the sun actually becomes a lot more "random" in its reactions; it increases the entropy of the Universe overall. We cannot simply look at the Entropy on earth, because we get a lot of energy from the stars; we are not a closed system. We have to look at the Universe as a whole, and the Universes entropy is increasing. For every highly organised little pocket like earth, we have a billion stars burning out.

I think I understand what you are saying about the earth not being in a closed system, but all of this is truly beyond my comprehension! So ...

If some religious people are saying some certain law seems to mean the earth can only now be degenerating after a six-day creation, I would say they have been wrongly ignoring science while listening too much to the dogmatic preacher.

I really do not understand all of this, but I do hope that statement of mine makes some kind of sense!

I am approached daily at my university by these people. Needless to say, I get upset when they approach. I especially get upset when they start praying for me. It makes me feel like they think something is wrong with me.

Religion is not for everyone.

My school hired a f*****g religious proselytiser to talk to us in final year.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against reasonable people who happen to be religious but I was disgusted that my school brought in this American Baptist preacher (and not for the first time) to tell us how wrong all other religions were and how only through protestant Christianity can you avoid hell.

Bit of relevant background; I went to a state school (i.e for all religions) in Northern Ireland. It's not a war zone anymore, but it certainly was when I was younger. Whilst the majority of people in my year were probably already Protestant (and thus the whole talk was just preaching to the converted), what kind of idiot tells a generation of school kids who might already have lost family members to the Troubles that their Catholic neighbours are going to hell (he specifically mentioned them). And what kind of idiots bring in this guy year after year?

Ironically, I had just taken up A level Religion that day and was sitting with the books on my lap. I wish I'd had the gall to hand them back to the teachers and storm out. I've labelled myself Athiest ever since.

Zero zilch nada except for Gideons simply nonverbally handing out pocket testaments once a year. AND one guy who stood in the mall noontimes haranguing and responding to hecklers. Not a very visible presence, barely at Jehovah's Witness coming to the door level.