Ab Preachers – Are They Influencing Your Beliefs?

[naomi24]

The sole intention of some here appears to be to preach their own particular flavour of religion. Is it working? Has anyone been tempted to find out more - or does it have the opposite effect?

[woofgang]

neither, I haven't seen anything to make me change my views in either direction.

[emmie]

i am completely indifferent to their protestations, they have their beliefs, good for them, however it hasn't ever changed my opinions of Religious matters.

[bensmum]

I hate being preached at, always has the opposite effect on me but there is nothing on here which has made me change my views either way.

[LazyGun]

@ Naomi - to be honest, it tends to reinforce the already jaundiced view I have of those of faith :)

Those who use this forum to preach do so for a reason. They will be motivated by faith, one imagines, but I think it was vetuste ( apologies if incorrectly attributed) who observed that JWs can get some sort of brownie points for doing such virtual preaching, or that it counts towards their preacher badge or something.

I doubt they could claim that their motivation is fuelled by positive feedback in these forums.

I would imagine that they might view such forums as good training grounds, and ways of brushing up on their scripture. In a sort of perverse way, it would be nice to think that, by engaging with the almost instant and overwhelming refutations of their sermons that it would be brushing up their own individual debating, logic and scriptural skills, but sadly, it appears only to be giving them greater opportunity to practice the intellectually dishonest skill of the unattributed cut and paste.....

[argorstran]

I think that their goal is to put out information to people who are interested , not necessarily to preach or to influence people . By putting that information in the form of a question they can target it at people who want to find out more .The very fact that you have clicked on to their question means that you do indeed want to find out more so in a sense they've reached their target .
You may be influenced , you may not be influenced , you may disagree , but at least you have the information . The old adage - you can never have too much information - and you will have learned a little bit more .(and so will they , reading your answer)
You are not really being preached at because you have voluntarily chosen to click on their question having seen the headline .
I think the level of vitriol poured out against them is unjustified .

[starone]

I do the same as I do when they call at the door - say no thank you and close the door rapidly before they have a chance to say more. My husband let them in once when we were very young and ended up buying books with much needed money when we were so poor we barely had enough to eat. Never again!!

[anneasquith]

i dont think its just the abers who have a ''religion'' who are preaching :) are my beliefs being influenced.............. no

[LazyGun]

If you wish to put out credulous wafflings as "information" into the public domain, expect it to be challenged. If you present as fact what is only faith or opinion, expect it to be challenged.
If you express beliefs that are mysogynistic or homophobic, or that are dismissive of rape and rape victims,or that attribute every human triumph to god and every human tragedy to man, or that flat out reject scientific fact, expect such stupidity to be robustly challenged.

In an information age, there are better sources and resources available to anyone who wants to learn about the universe around them than the deluded witterings of faithheads who like nothing more than to pose, as a question, a subject for which they plan to offer an intellectually dishonest, unattributed cut and paste scriptural response.

Personally, I could wish that there was a much greater quantity of vitriol and invective offered to them, but I am, sadly, probably in the minority....

[jno]

no, no more than the atheist preachers.

[Zacs-Master]

It puts me off religion even more, if that's possible. Tired old rhetoric of the blind who stubbornly refuse to even consider the mountains of evidence laid before them.

[Mick-Talbot]

no, no more than the atheist preachers.


Or the Left or right wing preachers...............

[LazyGun]

@jno "atheist preachers?" O-h-h clever, I see what you did there.

Well, I would appreciate a link to one of these atheist sermons, equivalent to the "questions" posted by goodlife et al that have been posted here - maybe its confirmation bias, but I cannot recollect very many, if any - certainly nothing like the quantity dribbled out by the likes of goodlife and truthabounds.....

[Baldric]

I would be more interested if thet were open to debate, they're not, it's just copy-paste, copy-paste all the time,
Boring!

[Baldric]

^^^ they ^^^

[jno]

or them, Mick, but those particular lines are blurrier than religous/nonreligious ones. People suddenly find themselves agreeing across party lines about things like police behaviour, or removal of benefits, for instance. That never happens in religion/nonreligion.

[jno]

LazyGun, you are requiring that atheist sermons be "equivalent" to goodlife's ones, presumably on the grounds that you don't think your posts are anything like goodlife's, because... basically... you're right and he's wrong. But to me, one outpouring of intolerant scorn is pretty much the same as another.

[LazyGun]

No, JNO - I am saying that goodlife and truthabounds regularly pose questions as sermons in Rand S with the intent of offering an unattributed cut and paste.

So , thats preaching - thats sermonising. Your comment, to me at least, appeared to suggest that there were similar efforts made by "atheist preachers", when of course we both know there are none.

What I and some others do here is to rebut the nonsense claims of the "scripture is fact" brigade.

Most of my responses are admittedly lacking any kind of respect, but other respondents are more temperate.

And yes, I do think I am right. at least when arguing some of the drivel offered up by the JWs that plague the forum :)

[dotty.]

Naomi they are small people in a big world and that's just the AB world. Not many people read past the first sentence in any long winded convulted thread on AB anyway, stand down .

[keyplus90]

Yeas, majority of the people tried preaching to me that God does not exist and told me bad and cooked things about my own religion Islam. As a result I looked into it more and now I can say that I am not Muslim only because I was born in a Muslim family but I am a Muslim because I looked into all of the other beliefs including atheism and found that AlhamduLillah (thanks God) that he had already chosen a right path for me.

I know your thread is a direct result of few resurrected Christians soon after Christmas (perhaps it’s their new year’s resolution) and for that reason you want re-assurance from people of your belief. I would only take any Christian seriously if first of all he/she proves that s/he is a true believer according to Mark chapter 16, verse 17 and 18 and then they show me that they are acting upon Jesus's (pbuh) teachings even according to their own book, Bible.

[dotty.]

what cooked things? are you a chef?