Why you all need others, to believe?

[LastPoet]

The question is in the title. Why do theists of all flavours feel the need for others to believe, to go to the lenghts of trying to combine their holy books with modern knowledge. Isn't their faith enough?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The question is in the title. Why do theists of all flavours feel the need for others to believe, to go to the lenghts of trying to combine their holy books with modern knowledge. Isn't their faith enough?

Wolves be prowlin' out there beyond the campfire light.

[no one]

Heaven, in all its portrayals, is nothing more than a multi-level marketing scheme. The magical, mystical ponzi wizard administers bonuses to the top producers.

[onlinebiker]

Simple - safety in numbers.

If two other people believe the same drivel you do - it's not as comforting if a million believe it.


It's still drivel of course...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The trick was to make it socially required. After that the fucking fat priests had the public working for them.

[arewethereyet]

Aren't some instructed to go out and recruit? Or at least they think they have been divinely instructed?

Whatever the reason - if I suddenly decide I need god/religion in my life I bet I can find a church without traveling very far.

[possibletarian]

The question is in the title. Why do theists of all flavours feel the need for others to believe, to go to the lenghts of trying to combine their holy books with modern knowledge. Isn't their faith enough?

Because part of the outworking of their faith is to 'spread the good news' (as they see it)

[brewer]

The question is in the title. Why do theists of all flavours feel the need for others to believe, to go to the lenghts of trying to combine their holy books with modern knowledge. Isn't their faith enough?

Why stop at just faith when you can have a war.

[mordant]

My theory is that proselytizing, as well as being controlling around the behaviors of people outside the religion, is the inevitable result of belief in corporate guilt. If you believe god will judge the innocent along with the guilty, punishing a whole family, tribe, denomination or nation for insufficient piety or even merely being overly tolerant of unbelief, then you will become anxious if society outside your religion is overly non-conformant. It reflects on you for "condoning sin" or not being sufficiently resistant to it and shaming toward it.

Combine this with conspiracy theories about "principalities and powers" working behind the scenes to undermine good conduct and righteous order, and you are keen to keep your numbers up and to do your best to cow the rest of society into fearing to make free choices that color outside YOUR lines. Weirdly, this tends to focus on sexual behavior, but also on certain other things at times, like doing business on Sunday.

Busybodies are concerned about their own perceived self-interest, just like everyone else.

There's this lady in our neighborhood who is a gossip, but it's easy to see that her need to know what everyone else is up to, reflects her anxiety. She feels more in control if she knows, and is seen as the central repository for, everyone's personal business. This is also in play for proselytizing Christians. In other words it can just be unconscious, free-floating anxiety so far as they are aware, that they're relieving. But its root, in my view, is this notion of corporate guilt and punishment.

[Paleophyte]

Because monotheism is an all-or-nothing proposition where the righteous cannot tolerate the heterodoxy of independent thought or belief. Ironically, the power structures that monotheistic religions produce inevitably promote schism and lead to precisely those heretical viewpoints that it cannot abide.