I am glad you had a good weekend. Mine was uneventful, but for me that is a good thing. It was after the weekend was over that things got stressful.
Mostly what I was wondering about is why “some atheists” spend as much time as they do talking about god and religion, if they have no interest in it. I am sure there are as many reasons as there are atheists. From talking to as many atheists as I have as long as I have I know that some atheists would like to believe in God if they had “what they consider” to be sufficient evidence that God exists, but most atheists are not really that concerned about whether god exists or not, or so it seems. Maybe they have given up that there will ever be sufficient evidence and maybe some do not care.
I was never an atheist as an adult, so I don’t even know what it would be like to not believe in God. It is just a part of me although for most of my adult life I just believed and it did not mean much to me. Now it means everything.
I do not know why other believers talk to atheists, I only know why I do.Psychology is my other hat, so I have always been curious about people, why they think and do what they think and do. Admittedly, I also talk to atheists just in case they might be interested in believing in God, and I know some are simply because they have told me that. But to me their friendship is more important than anything else, and I learn from them just as they learn from me. I never push God or the Baha’i Faith, I just share what I believe.
My atheist friends finally realized that I have no interest in convincing them to believe anything, but given their past experience with Christians who demoralize them and threaten them with hellit took a long time for them to realize that. Now that they know I am just their friend and a sounding board, they do not feel threatened by me. On my forum we are all on a first name basis as I developed these friendships over the years. All of us know where we stand with belief and other things we discuss.
Maybe most believers are trying to convince atheists that God exists, I do not really know. The Christians I have encountered ion my other forums do that a lot but I have not seen that as much on this forum.
I have no interest in convincing anyone of anything. I am a firm believer in free will, and that everyone has to make their own choices, which means that if they want to search for God they will. If not, that is their choice too. Nobody should try to convince anyone what they should believe, people have to convince themselves, if they are interested. Baha’u’llah wrote that the faith of no man can be conditioned by anyone except himself, meaning it should not be.
You mentioned humanity’s problems. What do you think those problems are? It seems to me that many people, believers and nonbelievers, do not “see” any problems, but rather think the world is no different than it has ever been. Perhaps it is because I am a Baha’i that I know nothing is the same and it never will be the same again. This is a new Day of God, a new religious cycle, the likes of which humanity has never seen before. This is a day that will not be followed by night, as in past history. It is going to get better from here on in, but there will be hills and valleys along the way, and it will take a long time before we see the promised Golden Age of humanity. It is going to take everyone working together to establish this, certainly the Baha’is do not believe we will be the primary builders. We believe we have the blueprint instructions from Baha’u’llah, but others are already following those instructions never having even seen them.
I should add that many of the atheists I used to converse with on a forum I no longer post on were really concerned about the environment, global warming, extinction of animals, etc. Some are also very concerned about social issues and talk a lot about politics.
It is true that there would be a lot more time to do things if we did not talk so much, but then we would not have the opportunity to learn from each other and become friends.
My idea of a perfect world is people working together with people of all different beliefs and non-beliefs, for the good of the whole. I already see that happening but it will become more noticeable as time goes on.