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Atheists Boots on the Ground

Posted on July 1st, 2011 by Staks

Atheists often joke about how Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses go door to door pushing their religion. Yes, it is incredibly annoying and no one likes it. But even though it annoys people, it also gets their message out there. People don’t even have to listen to what they say, the fact that they are there reminds people of their message. Maybe atheists should start putting some boots on the ground too… but in our own way.

One of the great things about the door to door evangelists is that they give you literature (if you can call it that) which has their church address and meet times listed on the back. I don’t like annoying people who don’t deserve to be annoyed. So I don’t support going to random houses to talk about atheism the way Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses do to talk about God. But since churches love to spread their message using these means or other annoying tactics, maybe we should pay them a visit… about ten minutes into their services.

“Knock, knock, anyone here? Oh, you are in the middle of something. Can I take a moment of your time to tell you a little about reality?” Or, if you don’t want to be rude the way religious people like to be rude, you can wait until right after or right before the service. Or my personal favorite is right when they start passing the collection plate. 😉

Seriously though, we need to start engaging the religious in everyday life. There are many atheist tracts available online. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a lot of them. However, most of them are rather wordy and it might be tough to get religious believers to actually read them. So I was thinking of creating some tracts of my own.

I want to create a series of tracts. Some should be very polite and friendly while others should be harsh. Some should be humorous while other should be direct and to the point. But they need to be easy to read (i.e. not wordy) and invoke thought. Because the fact is that no one reads a tract and then instantly de-converts. The idea is to get people thinking. I am open to ideas. In the mean time, here is an old video that I love dealing with door to door atheism: