"Hi, I'd like to talk to you about..."

Well, it had to happen one day. I'd read that you can't be for too long in this country before you encounter an evangelizer, who's going to start the conversation with a huge smile and a big, Oh my, you're from India? and then ask if you have ever thought about life, and God, and what is the purpose of life. 

It's easy to see the purpose of their life. They have nothing better to do, than go about trying to achieve conversion of the people, who aren't already of their flock. Now, as an atheist, I seriously believe that most people are simply fooling themselves with whatever concepts of divinity and religion they're feeding on, but really, most of those people are harmless, and dangerous only to themselves, and as long as they stay that way, I really don't give a damn. It's when they start preaching their ideas to you, without any sense or invitation to do so, that they begin to get on your nerves. 

I don't have anything against Christians, or people of any religion for that matter. Rather, I should say that I do not think any the worse about someone simply because of their religion or religious belief. I do think their sanity is somewhat questionable, but that doesn't mean they can't be good people at heart. It's an open question, and though I believe what science has to say about the world, and I feel that science has the greater probability of being right about the issue, I will go so far being politically correct as to acknowledge that others have the right to think differently, if such is their inclination. No, the problem arises when people try to inflict their ideas on other people, without offering any reasonable justification for what they believe. 

I met a couple of young women today, out strolling their babies on the college campus. This is pretty common: the campus is a lovely, peaceful place, and it's nice to take a walk there. What I don't usually get is being stopped and questioned about my beliefs. They said hi, introduced themselves, and told me they were alumni, and had studied so many years back (not too long). Then, gently, they asked me if I have ever thought about life, and the purpose of life, if I had thought about what is lacking in life and happiness, even though humans have so much in their lives for them.

I knew what was coming. The next few sentences would be evangelical lines, and come they did. They started out by saying they believe in God, and they believe in Jesus, and they believe that Jesus loves them. They paused to ask me what I think. I replied stating that I have never thought about it, because I don't think I'm old enough yet to think of it, to which they immediately replied that "you may think so now, but one day, it may be too late to think about it", and something of the sort. They asked me if I knew anything about Jesus. I said yes, I've read about all the religions in school in Social Studies, and I have Christian friends too, I'm quite familiar with all the ideas.

The funny thing is, instead of picking up on that, as I was expecting them to, they went off in a totally different direction. "Oh, we guess you must be a Hindu?" and then they started on a tale of how the reason that we are always searching, is "because God is a virtuous God, a holy God, but Man is not so; Man is born sinful", followed by something about "searching for something to fill the emptiness inside, and that's why people make up so many religions, but in spite of all that, the search never ends", and then one female said something pretty weird, in the vein of, "you say you have Christian friends, but... don't know how Christian they are..." Then followed some idea about how "we all are sinful, but Jesus died for us, and so covered our sins, so that when God sees us, he doesn't see our sins, because Jesus is covering us".

I got a little angry at this point. It's hard to believe things like this really happen, that people can be so brazen, even though you've read about it a hundred times before. So people make up religions, do they? Well, darling, of course they do, and your own is equally made up, and there is not a shred of evidence to support any one religion more than any other, be it a religion in my country or yours. And I suppose my friends were not "Christian" enough, because apparently they hadn't tried yet to convert me! (This is one thing I read about on the net. Some people are convinced the only "true" Christians are those who actively work to convert all non-believers.) If you try to get picky and take apart that last sentence, about the 'covering' and the rest of it, you get lost somewhere. It just does not make any sense at all.

I purposely did not (and do not usually) let out that I am an atheist, because I was in no mood to get into a beautiful argument about belief and non-belief. My hair would start to whiten prematurely with having to dish out the same argument to every person I meet upon the street corner. I am not really a good debatist either, and I was also in a hurry to get someplace that was more interesting than anything these two would have had to say. Already, I was regretting trying to be politically correct by humoring their idiocy. 

Fifteen minutes of beautiful time utterly wasted. Of course, this sort of religious idiocy is not something possessed only by Christians. There are a whole bunch of people back home, who believe in all sorts of religious bullshit (horoscopes, eclipses are evil, superstitions of various kinds, etc), but their bullshit is easier to ignore, because it's more of a personal practice. If my friend thinks that the shadow of an eclipse is something evil, she can satisfy herself and stay at home, but woe betide her if she tries to press that idea on me, and stop me from leaving the house, and she knows that.

People back home usually don't bother with forcing their ideas on you (although I have a feeling it's mostly due to the misbegotten idea that you think the same way that they do). Works fine that way. And when they do try to impose, you can actually just tell them to go rot. They won't care. They won't bother. "The rest of the world can go to hell if it chooses to; I'm gonna take care of myself." We each follow the same policy in the end. Religious bullshit here might prove to be a lot more difficult to handle though, because there's an entire force of idiots actively trying to feed it to you. "Oh no, we can't and won't let you go to hell, when you can be SAVED!!!"

I wonder if a change in policy would help.