Missionary Work

[Phaedrus]

Been thinking for a couple days about creating this thread.

It should come to no surprise that I am one-hundred percent against any type of missionary work.

Cultures are destroyed, first and foremost. A shame, really.

But what I wanted to focus on was the despicable christian preying that goes on. I spelled that correctly. Preying. These theists prey on people who need things such as food and water. When the theists state, "Our God has ensured you receive this", it creates this false entitlement to a being that did absolutely nothing. 

Helping people for the sake of helping them, and leaving god the fuck out of it, is what it should be all about.

[Mathilda]

It makes a lot more sense if you think of such religions as a parasite on society.

[no one]

You're saying people shouldn't just lie there and accept the missionary position?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yeah, assistance with strings attached is pretty scummy. I used to volunteer at a food bank when I lived in SoCal. While I was looking for the right outfit to work with, I came across a couple of food banks/clean-up shelters that demanded religious activity of some sort on the part of the recipient.

[SYZ]

During the late 18th and 19th centuries, English Christian missionaries gave our Aussie indigenous
peoples everything that they'd been lacking or desirous of for more than 40,000 years.

Alcoholic beverages, ischaemic heart disease, diabetes, tobacco, firearms, HIV AIDS, rubella, influenza,
syphilis  and gonorrhea, gambling, refined sugars and grains, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis...  You know, all
those things that the missionaries themselves had luxuriated in and enjoyed for centuries.

[Dancefortwo]

You're saying people shouldn't just lie there and accept the missionary position?

  king of the one liners strikes again

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I had a lady give me hell for fixing up an orphanage in the PI.

"You just did that so they'd think the USN was full of nice people."

"Well, it's certainly not filled with people like you, shithead."

[brewerb]

Look at what they did to Annie Lennox!

[Minimalist]

All of these holy fuckers think they have a duty to spread the word no matter how much harm they do.

[julep]

I was a missionary kid.  The mission was within the US, to jails and prisons, and also gave extra help for ex cons recently released who were trying to transition back to civilian life by helping them with jobs, housing, etc. Of course, that extra help was only available to converts willing to pray and witness and perform their contrition on command for the sponsors.  

No surprise: a lot of the guys couldn’t take it.  Some took off, a couple of times with our car.  And once with my mother, which at least got my father out of the missionary business.  

I am not a fan of missionaries.

[OakTree500]

I think it depends what the "mission" is.

For example, My uncle spent a lot of his life on missions [very religious guy] helping out in orphanages and stuff like that. That sort of thing I thought was pretty nice to be honest. I mean, I presume it was in some sort of religious base confine, but at the same time he was helping kids who had no home. I believe he did this for many years. Obviously can't say for sure that it was all good, but he himself was the nicest/most positive guy in the world and doing something like this truly seemed to be something he felt was his calling in life.

[outtathereligioncloset]

During the November/December holidays TV was flooded with commercials promoting donations to "International Fellowship of Christians and Jews" so they could give much needed boxes of food to poor starving Jews in Israel. Each box would would contain a message of God's blessings from this caring organization. Next year I'm going to call and ask if they will guarantee a message that this box came from an atheist who cares. I'm betting they won't be getting my donation.

[Phaedrus]

It's why supporting secular humanitarian organizations is a better alternative.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Doctors Without Borders, that's how "missionary" work should work.

[Mark]

Been thinking for a couple days about creating this thread.

It should come to no surprise that I am one-hundred percent against any type of missionary work.

Cultures are destroyed, first and foremost. A shame, really.

But what I wanted to focus on was the despicable christian preying that goes on. I spelled that correctly. Preying. These theists prey on people who need things such as food and water. When the theists state, "Our God has ensured you receive this", it creates this false entitlement to a being that did absolutely nothing. 

Helping people for the sake of helping them, and leaving god the fuck out of it, is what it should be all about.

I probably don't feel quite so strongly about it as you but I'm 100% against it.  Media and modern transportation is making the world plenty the same without coercive exportation of ones religion.  It is pretty much the only kind of empire available these days.

[Glossophile]

Doctors Without Borders, that's how "missionary" work should work.

Religion is much better at drawing borders than erasing them. Sure, one might argue that Christianity united much of Europe during the Middle Ages, but even if we grant that, it seems to have done so not by tolerating diversity of thought but by persecuting it. Perhaps this is a general truth about religion, or at least Abrahamism.  It is either divisive or oppressive.  It can even be both, but it can never be neither. In the case of overbearing missionaries, it's certainly proven itself willing to divide the destitute from the aid to which they really should be entitled by simple human decency.