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Since I went public with my Atheism upon retirement 22 years ago, I have tried my best to get people to THINK about religions. Hundreds of letters to the editor, picketing churches the White House, the Congress the Supreme Court, etc. Believe I've 'converted' a few Agnostics to Atheism, a few Xians to at least question the doctrines & dogma of Xianity. Made a lot of friends & quite a few enemies too. I cherish both.
My understanding is that Theism/Atheism is the base and Gnosticism/Agnosticism is the modifier.

A Gnostic Christian is one of the fundies, who knows that the Bible is the literal word of God, who talks to God (there are meds that can fix that), and is very dictatorial about their religion.

Agnostic Christians are the wishy-washy apologists who pick and choose what they want out of the Bible ... some of them barely believe in the Bible at all and just have this weird concept that there is a god, and God is love, and God is all Good, and blah blah blah blah blah.

Agnostic Atheists don't believe that there is sufficient proof to believe in a deity, but they haven't seen enough evidence to declare that there certainly isn't a deity.

Gnostic Atheists are the "hard Atheists" who feel they have enough evidence to declare that there definitely is not a God.

I'm not sure I'd classify myself all the way over in the last category ... but if there is any kind of deity out there, and I somehow did find enough evidence to believe in it, I'd have some serious questions that would need answering, before I could worship it. The way that our creator is running the world displays either gross incompetence or a sadistic streak.
Well Said!
I converted someone to a ninja once. Does that count?

On a serious note, I don't know that I have ever truly deconverted someone from theism. They do that themselves. I'm just one of the many participants that aids them through the process. The other big ones are, themselves, understanding of how science and knowledge work, as well as a little bit of semantics.
congratulations, I have converted 3
My brother, one cousin and I finally convinced my father that he was, in fact, an Atheist.
One exchange between my father and his very Catholic sister several weeks before his death that will always stick with me, was when my aunt told him she had arranged for a priest to come a see him. His response was "I wish you hadn't done that because of the burden it will put on my sons". She of course wanted to know how it could be a burden on my brother and me. To which he responded. "Because I'm to damn weak and I'd have to have my sons throw the son of a bitch out."
LOL, Great. My 84 year old sentiments exactly, but my only son is married to a Xian & he doesn't want to rock the boat. So I'd have to be the one to get off my deathbed to throw the SOB out.
I prefer the term de-indoctrinate. In my experience it's best not to confront the indoctinated head on but lead them to the truth so they feel it is they who discover the problems with religion . For example it's not much good going up to a crazy Christian and saying, "Hey, your wrong, there's no god and here's why." I find it best to let people ask me what I think about religion or if the topic comes up in converstaion to give my slant on it and let them ask me why I don't believe. Then like you I might lend them a book or refer them to a video on youtube or a website. I have had some success this way.
I like that de-indoctrinate. De-indoctrinate to the default
Yes, my boyfriend (I think I could have converted him into anything. ;-) He wasn't really a believer, just a little superstitious. Now, he is as anti-theist as I am.

I also was a seriously Xian kid. I think formerly religious people become the most outspoken atheists.
lol, so true. Diana, next you should convert him into a chef!
Tacky, tacky, tacky


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