Saturday 24 July 2010

Knock knock knocking on atheist doors

So a representative of some religious order knocked on my door this morning, as happens from time to time. He was a very nice chap but I pointed out that he'd really knocked on the wrong door. My house contains, when everybody's in, two atheists, a buddhist and a fourth bod, whose views I'm unaware of, and who's rarely around anyway. So, to use a cricketing analogy, I played the usual dead bat straight away and we ended up chatting about Brighton & Hove Albion, as often happens when people talk to me for any length of time. To his credit he took no for an answer and went on his way, but these encounters always leave me wondering what they get out of spending their time going round knocking on doors when they have no idea what lies behind them.

How many people can ever, in the history of any one door knocker's door knocking, ever have been converted this way, or even been given pause to think properly on the matter when they hadn't been before? Surely anybody with anything about them would already have given these matters some thought and come to a conclusion of their own? What can a stranger on their doorstep say to anybody with a brain in their head that they've not already considered? And how would I be received at their house if I went round trying to persuade them to recant their theological beliefs?

There's always the possibility of course that they could call on some boggle-eyed psychopath and end up finding out what lies beyond rather sooner than they'd anticipated. Or a Muslim/Sikh/any other faith house where even they must be aware that they're wasting their time completely. I am, at least, always polite to anybody who comes calling in such circumstances, but leave them in no doubt that they're wasting their time in the hope they won't return. It was not always thus. When I was still living at home, when I was about 16 I think, Jehovah's Witnesses came calling during the Cup Final. My parents were out so I reluctantly went to the door to be confronted by two JWs who clearly had not the slightest idea that anything was going on that people may not wish to be interrupted from. So I told them I was a practising Satanist and shut the door, so I could get back to the game.

This was clearly the wrong approach as they must have gone away worrying about my soul. They came back one evening the following week armed with considerably thicker literature in much greater quantity, but had the misfortune to have the door answered by my mother, who is a small but formidable woman, and she didn't take too kindly to having her preparations for dinner interrupted by them. She shut the door on them in a manner than ensured they did not return.

So save your time, lads 'n lasses. I'm not buying and I'd be stunned to learn that anybody else is.

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