Guess they didn't want to have a conversation with you afterall...

When they come to my door, I hit them with, "my people go back 4000 years before yours, so move on to the next door".

Their mission is to recruit. They haven't the brains beyond a 2-yr. old to hold a discussion or debate. I use to be a companion for a hospice patient in the evenings so her daughter could do other things. One evening I had gone to her JW meeting, because she had told me that no one else would push her (in her wheel chair). To my surprise, 45 minutes into the churchy thing, she speaks up and introduces me as her latest pupil !

Hah! Love it!

The last time I had some ladies come to my door, I think I might have gotten them in a bit of trouble with their higher-uppers. We got into a discussion about fear of end times (since that's what they inevitably use to lead in with), how the Bible says that we're not to live by a spirit of fear, and I started telling her about all the different eschatological theories about end times to demonstrate that each of them have their own cherry-picked verses to support them just like the JW version of events does, and that Jesus said we couldn't know, so I didn't see the point in speculating anyway. She came back a couple times within the next month to continue the conversation and the last time there was a different woman than usual with her who was clearly there to supervise her. I suspect she started asking too many questions, since she didn't know half of what I was telling her about, and people started to think I was leading her astray.

That was before Trump, and now I can't even stand to talk to them anymore, because now they use political and social events (like the woman killed by white supremacists in charlottesville) in their little "are you afraid, because we're in the end times soon" spiel. I just find it monumentally appropriative and disrespectful and it makes me mad.

"but they seemed to recoil when I said I don't buy into anything supernatural"

How horrific is this, really? It should be the exact OPPOSITE in the 21st damned century...the very notion thatn if you do NOT believe in LITERAL MAGIC, you are viewed as 'crazy' is...CRAZY.
.

I wonder if something along the lines of "I'll hear you if you hear me" might have worked out.

They cannot afford to waste time with skeptics when it gets so to find gullible people to buy their brand of salvation.