Imprisoned with Christians for a day.

[kılıç_mehmet]

What is your problem?
Really, what is your problem?

Imagine being stuck in a room with someone who deeply wants you to be like them. So much so, in fact, that everything you communicate to them about, is in someway injected with their ideology.

Just imagine, say, that they're Maoists and zealous ones at that. Every conversation you have, from meal planning to teaching, is about Mao Zedong's ideology and his little red book.

This is the super sensitivity of some atheists -- they're surrounded by people who, knowingly or unknowingly, try to force their ideology onto them all the time.

If you don't believe such a place exists, try being a Christian in Waziristan or an Atheist in the Bible Belt.

I don't know why they would want that. I have lived in a predominantly Christian country for three years. I made friends amongst people I knew who were going to church every sunday, some, evangelicals, some catholics, I've visited their homes...I was a Turk, a moslem, they were christian Germans. They have not given me a bible to read, but food to eat, they have not scorned me for being a heathen, but have spoken well of my manners.
These people were simply the parents of a friend I knew from school. Not preachers, or pastors or missionaries.
I've met missionaries in Germany. Jehovah's witnesses. They came to our door, we told them politely that we were not interested. They never came back, but left a small booklet of theirs, which I read some six years later(I did not speak English back then). Now, why am I writing this, I think that people here are exaggerating things.

Let's get to your example. Well, I'm not really a fan of the commie block, but I remember sharing a room with a few back in the days. They would hang posters of their main men on the doors, walls and etc. They'd play the internationale on their computer for the 10th time a day... And I was the only one who did think different from them, although my opinions were not fully formed at the time-I had doubts. After spending a year or so with these comrades, I had listened to most of their ideas. I've at least taken a peak in most of their books, and have split the rooms not because we were discussing communism every day(not that we didn't), no it was because I was thrown out of the dormitory for some other minor inconvenience concerning a fight in another room.

So you see, one can at least learn something from a side that one thinks that is the polar opposite of what he believes in, although I'm sure I'd get along with your fundamentalist friends and relatives, as I get along with the ones here, quite well.