Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

Convert me!

Here's an open challenge to all true believers out there who are afeared fer ma everlastin' soul. Convert me. Save me. Convince me to accept Jesus (or Mohammed or Allah or Thor or whoever) as my true saviour. Go for it. There are a couple of rules, though.

No Bibles

The bible is a book. Whether or not it is the inerrant word of god, it's still a book. Lots of books have been written by lots of people; if I'm to believe that the bible is divinely inspired, then I have to believe in divinity first. So you're just going to have to convince me that god exists without resorting to using the bible as if it were evidence.

In any case, if you want to argue using the bible as a reference, you then also have to allow the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, Dianetics, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Bhagavad Gita, and so on. After all, there is just as much evidence that those texts are divinely inspired as there is for the bible being so.

No Faith

You have faith that there is a god and that he loves you and watches over you and so on. Fine. I don't. The fact that you believe without evidence is not convincing, any more than it is when used by those who believe that Barack Obama is a foreign-born muslim, that the CIA is out to get them, or that aliens are responsible for global warming. There used to be a guy who sat all day on a bench by the cable car turnaround at the foot of California street here in San Francisco yelling about how Bush (the elder) something-or-other. I'm sure he believed whatever it was he was mumbling with all his broken little heart. Doesn't mean I did.

No Goa'uld

Ever see the movie Leap of Faith with Steve Martin? He plays a fake faith healer and the movie reveals many of the tricks used to put on such shows. How about the TV Series Stargate SG-1? Based on the movie Stargate, the show explains that the ancient Egyptian gods (and a few other sets of deities) were actually aliens using advanced technology to trick the primitive earthlings into believing they were supernatural and thus worthy of worship and servitude. If you're going to convince me to believe in your god, you'll have to convince me that your god is not simple trickery (and I've seen the best) or advanced technology (with or without alien involvement.) (See more about this here.)

So go for it. Convert me to whatever religion your parents' parents' parents thunk up. If you can do that, that truly would be a miracle.