Easy. I just don't discuss it. My religion/non-religion is my business and no one elses

I don't really discuss my own opinions or beliefs too much with anyone but if someone brings up their beliefs I will let them speak and then start asking questions like I would a child or rather like I am one. I ask specific questions like "If we are all descendants of Adam and Eve then what other tribe could there have been for Cain to marry outside of ? How come there is more than one race, or blood type? Who translated the bible into English? WHo exactly handed it down to us? Who decided which books were Gods word and which ones could be destroyed? By asking questions, we get them to think about the inconsistencies in the teachings. My favorite question is why wars and violence seem to be directly connected to the "Christian" movement. What kind of fruit our we producing? I believe that most people are indoctrinated into their false belief system since birth. Many people question the teachings but are terrified to speak up because they will be ostracized by everyone. When I got excommunicated from the Mormon church no-one was allowed to even give me eye contact until I repented so I moved and never spoke to them again but I have been truly alone since then so if we want to help people we need to give them a safe place to speak and options to help them get out of the matrix!

I rarely do it these days but from time to time something will bug me so much that I feel compelled to say something about it. Despite changing culture, Ireland is still very much a stronghold of Catholicism and the group pressure not to have fair and open discussion on it is a force to be reckoned with. Some of this pressure will come from the family and some will come from society at large

I think it's fair to say that organised religions socially engineer societies to this end and do it very effectively. It's basically a survival mechanism to keep them afloat in an age of increasing enlightenment.

I don't have the conversations. If I am in a setting of like minded people I share thoughts, otherwise I don't bother.

Seems you need to stick to the subject at hand, or go poker faced if/ when confronted by religion. Growing stuff, the weather, the condition of the roads.. if you can connect with ‘them’ on a basic level, and come off as level headed, you’ll gain their respect. If so, they’re a bit more cautious with regard to pushing a religion..

I don't discuss with folks.

I live in a divided community that has been warring for a long time (I wasn't born here came here when I was forty) The Troubles were not quite over. Its still very rural and conservative on both sides of the catholic protestant divide - whole towns are one or the other - I rarely discuss politics as there is no separation from that and religion and strangely its o.k if you're foreign (English in my case) You pretty much don't count and its okay to be atheist because I don't count an d I rather think that they expect all English people to be godless which for me is nice.

I would ask if there were any chance that I could change their mind and say there is no chance that you could change mine. I do not have discussions on the topic. End of story.

I get tired of the sad eyes. I don't generally talk about it with people. That's why I love that I found this site.

It's like, I don't really care so much what personal beliefs someone has as long as they don't have an adverse effect on society but in the case of organised religions, they can have a detrimental effect on entire populations through their social engineering programmes and inseparable binding of church and state. The reason they do this is to survive because irrational belief systems cannot last for the long term in relatively enlightened and psychologically healthy and functional societies so they adopt these strategies as defence mechanisms to resist any effective challenge to their tenets or core beliefs.

An example might be the Catholic obsession with sex. It's not about the real or imagined "moral question" of personal sexual practices or habits so much as it's about controlling reproductive demographics in their favour because once they start to lose numbers, their overall percentage drops and that is a challenge to their survival. The same goes for their official policies on contraception and abortion. Belief systems are collective social entities struggling to survive and they will do almost anything to achieve that, sometimes to the point of war.

Not for me here in central Texas, most of my friends are religious skeptics or liberal christians.

As a person who lives in a conservative area, I just don't talk to anybody around here. I have friends in more developed areas, but if I do end up engaging in a heated topic with someone, I just try my best to keep it civil at least.

As a person who lives in a conservative area, I just don't talk to anybody around here. I have friends in more developed areas, but if I do end up engaging in a heated topic with someone, I just try my best to keep it civil at least.

Not hard at all.
There is no debate or discussion.

I'm trpe "A". I have no trouble at all. I tend not to "Hide my light under a bushel!".

Wow lots of peeps here against rocking the boat. How do we change things?

I am not a conservative defined as: anti-choice, anti-social welfare, anti-environmental regulations and safeguards, anti-banking regulation etc. and I live in a deep red state infested with theists.

I often debate theist on the topics of their religion and occasionally on their socially and environmental destructive outcomes of their hard core republican and what I consider to be even more vile Libertarianism views.

I have de-converted a few Republican/theist but most of them run ("Got to go" and walk very quickly away)

On a side note; It is fun to watch the expression on their face when, after presenting many examples of the fallacy of their positions they imagine are beneficial, they realize their political stance does not actually benefit them but hurt their position in the world.

I live in a Hasidic community..Just living my life is "controversial" here..I love it..lol

ITS easy, just wrangle it to an outsider of faith and leave a pebble of doubt

“Where ignorance is bliss tis folly to be wise.” Thomas Gray – tread lightly

I just don't. I avoid the subject.

In the US it is to have a discussion about , US foreign policy, US not being the greatest, I have noticed. It is funny because when I go to US those subjects may get you killed if you want to discuss them and don't agree with the other person, while in Europe and other wester countries you can have a great discussion, learn from each other agree on subject or not and still be friends.