I was tooling around on Elwed’s blog where he was commenting on a Christian blogger by the name of John Bartlett who was ruminating on an atheist bumper sticker he had seen the other day:
“Proud to be an Atheist”
..was printed on the bumper sticker I followed for several stop lights a few weeks ago. It was on a pick-up truck driven by a man in his mid-30’s. I guess it shouldn’t shock me, but yep… it shocks me that someone could believe there was no God. As I followed his truck on my way home from work I just prayed for him. I didn’t know what else to do (although I did think about getting into a wreck with him so that I could try and work God into the ensuing conversation). I wanted to talk to him to see if I could reason with him.
If only he knew what I and so many others know to be true.
...
I feel such a passion for this. I’m totally serious here… I was actually trying to figure out how I could talk to this guy! If I didn’t think he’d punch me for wrecking his truck I probably would’ve done it!
That’s some pretty bad gotta-proselytize jonesing going on if you’re actually considering getting into a traffic accident just to try and convert someone. Mr. Bartlett later says he wouldn’t ever actually cause a wreck just to preach in the comments that follow the entry, but then why claim in the last sentence that he was totally serious and only stayed his hand because of fear he’d get punched out?
Why the big desire to try and convert others from so many Christians? I used to just write it off as them following what the Bible says in terms of going out and witnessing to others, but when you get passionate statements like the one from Mr. Bartlett there has to be something more to it than just following God’s directions behind it all. It’s things like that which make it a lot easier to accept the theory that Christianity is a particularly virulent form of meme. It’s not enough to be content in the feelings of wonderfulness that such a deeply held belief brings about, they have to validate their beliefs by convincing others to join in on the delusion. They tell themselves they simply want others to know the immense peace and love and happiness a relationship with Jesus brings them, but if they were so damned content they wouldn’t need the external validation their witnessing is meant to bring about. I suspect, though I can’t prove it, that it’s lingering doubts about the stories they’ve bought into so completely that brings about this behavior.
During the course of give and take in the comments Mr. Bartlett asks the following question: “If you had the cure for cancer wouldn’t you shout it from the rooftops too? Someone else responded with the quite true statement that anyone who did have the cure for cancer wouldn’t need to shout it from the rooftops so long as other scientists could replicate the experiments and confirm the claim. Besides, there are already thousands of people who claim to have the cure for cancer out there who have just as much evidence supporting their cures as Mr. Bartlett has for his God. When they can back it up with something more than “I know in my heart that this is true” then I’ll stop to listen, but until then I’m not buying what they’re selling.
Posted on 11/30/2005 at 07:36 PM 
Posted on 09/09/2006 at 10:21 PM 
Meme’s are such persistent little entities! They never give up!
I explored them to some extent in my book “God-101” (what the church doesn’t want you to know)