Question from Katie:
I am a very strong Christian. I have studied my religion in depth and I have no doubt that it is true. My sister recently married an Atheist. He is intent on destroying my family’s faith. We have had several theological arguments and always run into the same wall, his logic versus our faith. I recognize that faith and belief in God is not logical. But that does not diminish my faith.
I have told my brother in law that I will never take away his right to not believe in God and that I will never try to convert him. He can not show me the same courtesy. He is determined to “stop the Christian movement”. What I want to know is why does he care so much? If I believe something he doesn’t why is he so adamant to change my feelings? I don’t believe in the tooth fairy but I don’t visit local elementary schools to tell children the truth about the fairy conspiracy.
I have never tried to convince him that he is wrong because I believe everyone has the right to believe in what their conscience dictates. He is constantly trying to change my thoughts. I am not an Atheist hater and I mean no disrespect by my question. I am looking for an answer and I hope you can shed light on this dilemma.
Answer:
Simply thinking that what people believe is wrong isn’t the only reason to try to convince them otherwise.
Imagine if the tooth fairy wasn’t just a game of pretend that children grew out of soon after the “age of reason”. Imagine if a huge number of people believed in the fairy their whole lives. (Practically speaking, since parents were still the ones taking the teeth from under the pillow, they’d have to believe that the tooth fairy received the teeth after parents ritually disposed of them.)
Imagine therefore that:
– A child losing a tooth was a huge event, and the child was severely punished if he or she lost (or, Fairy forbid, swallowed) any loose teeth.
– Once they were adults, people nursed a feeling of inferiority from having no more teeth to give, and some even knocked out their adult teeth as offerings.
– Zealous Toothians travelled to Third World countries with the primary goal not of helping the people with their existing problems but of collecting as many of their children’s teeth as possible, and some Toothian missionaries even refused aid to those who didn’t offer teeth.
– Those very rare occasions when a person grows a third set of teeth in adulthood were treated as miracles, and unscrupulous people conned Toothians out of their life savings and adult teeth by claiming to have the power to give them that third set.
– Toothian politicians legislated in favour of Toothian interests whenever possible, at the expense of everyone else’s rights.
If you personally didn’t believe in the tooth fairy but all of this were happening around you, you would see that these people weren’t just wrong in their beliefs, but were also spending huge amounts of time, energy and money on an essentially pointless enterprise at the expense of their own finances, health and wellbeing. Furthermore, you’d know that some of the more extreme Toothians were doing great harm to others and to their own, physically and psychologically, some unknowingly and some deliberately, as a direct result of being Toothians.
After realising all this, you might well come to the decision that it would be better for everybody if belief in the tooth fairy were dispelled. Whatever benefits humanity had to gain from Toothianism in terms of community, comfort and so on could come from other sources, but the specific excesses of radical Toothians simply would not occur without Toothian doctrine. So you’d do whatever you could to challenge general fairy belief as well as belief in the specific fairy which is most popular. You’d see it as doing people a favour.
I’ll let you draw your own parallels to elements of Christianity which appear to non-Christians in much the same light, Katie. The main issue is not usually the simple idea that one is right and others are wrong; it’s the effects that incorrect beliefs have on people that make those beliefs worth challenging.
I will say that your brother-in-law is being awfully confrontational about it, causing so much strife in what is now his own family. It’s obviously not having the desired effect either, so it’s not a great approach in this case.
– SmartLX
P.S. Don’t bother spelling “atheism” with a capital A. You wouldn’t spell “theism” with a capital T.
Why do you care?
“Simply thinking that what people believe is wrong isn’t the only reason to try to convince them otherwise.”