I just say no or nothing at all.

I was on vacation back east last week and after an incident where someone was trying to give me some religious literature at a gas station, I was reminded of this woman who posts 'tips and tricks' on how to spread your religious mind virus to others by striking up conversations with them in public. Basically, she writes about how to ambush people and get them to be on WOTM radio and yammer on about what horrible people they are unless they believe in her Jebus.

I wondered to myself why people bother talking to her and I looked around her site. I also wondered what my responses would have been to her had she or one of her religious cronies tried them on me. I should preface this with letting you know that if I even suspect that a person trying to talk to me in public is trying to sell me something or tell me about their invisible friend I ignore them with an air of unapproachability that usually makes them go the other way before they even start their spiel.

First I came across this, in which she hands out her religious blah blah at a gas station. This same thing was tried on me in the incident I referred to above. It didn't work. I do not take things from people simply because they are handing it to me. I also do not engage them in conversation and if 'No thank you' doesn't work the first time I have also found 'Fuck off' works quite well. Of course, she doesn't put the 'Fuck off' responses on her site.

Next, I found a place on her site where she writes 'A Great Springboard to Sharing the Gospel'. There is no link to that section so you have to go about a quarter of the way down the page and look for the 'Why believe in God?' sign. She then writes this:

"This is a great opener to the gospel...Just ask, So, what do you think about these signs?...and would you consider yourself a good person for goodness sake?"

My reply would be to either ignore her completely due to the fact that I generally do not engage in conversations with strangers in public or to proceed to eviscerate her 'good person test'. It would depend on my mood. Neither one of those replies would make it to her site either, since it appears she wants to slant the perception of the reader in such a way that it appears that she is successful on most every attempt.

Then I found this treat. She pays for the food of the person behind her in the drive through fast food line and then asks the fast food worker to do her dirty work for her. She gives him her religious junk and tells him to give it to the person whose food she paid for! That's underhanded. You can't just do something nice for someone, you have to attach strings to it. Welcome to Christian charity.

Personally, if I were the fast food worker I would refuse her literature and I would refuse to pass it on to anyone. That is not part of their job.

There's tons more crap over there if you want to burn a few brain cells, but I hit the high (or maybe low) points.

Now a question to you guys. How do you react when someone in public tries to proselytize to you? I realize that not everyone is as ice cold as I am in public. Or as ice cold as I am in general. For me it's partly a safety issue and partly because I do not want to be bothered with other people's crap. I figure there are enough churches out there that if an adult wants to go find one and find religion they can do it on their own without having it pushed on them. Then again, I was reminded of my INTJ personality last week when my sister-in-law told me that I am not warm and cuddly and not emotional enough. Then again, my sister-in-law is also emotionally disturbed.

And you respond how?