The Prodigal Son

[robvalue]

Evangelising has a track record of zero percent success anyway, at least since I've been here. If anything, it has cemented people's scepticism when coming out of religion when picked at by vultures.

I don't consider this thread evangelising. I don't really know what the point of it is, but I'm happy to answer honest and unloaded questions. I think Ignorant is wise enough not to expect people to convert on the basis of things like this. I'm not constantly waiting for the "gotcha" card with him, like I am with most theists I've tried to debate here.

I also can't accurately predict what he's going to say, which is a nice change too.

No it does have an affect, it is just that most of the time the people you plant the seed of doubt in don't change suddenly, many times it takes years. The guy that got me to start thinking will never know where I ended up. He didn't make me a sudden atheist. All he did was ask me "What if Jesus was just a man". Took me almost a decade from that point to finally call myself an atheist.

Lets not forget many of us here were once believers. It took someone to question us. So it isn't that debate does not work, it is simply most of the time you wont see whom you have affected because by the time they finally figure it out they may have long since moved on.

I don't call it "evangelizing", yea I am trying to convince. "evangelizing" makes it sound like a sales pitch. If you know you are right, why wouldn't you want to help other people get to those facts too?

But no, I don't think we need to "evangelize" like JWs nor should we.

Sure, but I was referring to theists evangelizing in this instance. Atheists don't tend to evangelize in my experiemcs; they tend to tackle theists who are bringing things to them, or they addres claims theists have made in the past. It makes sense; atheism is entirely a position of reaction.

I guess it's possible the theist preachers here have converted some poor hapless lurker with their spiel. I would be very surprised, if it was a genuine conversion and not just a confirmation.