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My two cents on this off-topic discussion... I've never been a part of the goin't'hell group, but in my fairly extensive experience as a young adult in an evan

My two cents on this off-topic discussion... I've never been a part of the goin't'hell group, but in my fairly extensive experience as a young adult in an evangelical religious group, I certainly got the impression that the high touch personal approach was taken as more effective. Most people don't really like doing the door-to-door salesperson routine[0]. But they do it because it seems to work - assuming anyone actually answers the door (which is the real rarity). Or at least is effective enough; conversion rates are, shall we say, low. It doesn't need to be high, though, since the risk and reward is so high (failure means more lost, success is a life). [0] For introverts it can be extremely stressful - practice is the only thing that seems to make the terror go away for them. If the person at the door preachin' the word looks awkward and is stammering, be kind - they're more afraid of you than you are of them :) EDIT: slight grammar/clarification. EDIT EDIT: This is off-topic enough I'm going to just truncate part of my comment to gist: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/dead25324e4f74ccc183 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/dead25324e4f74ccc183

littlepooghish 11y ago
> If the person at the door preachin' the word looks awkward and is stammering, be kind - they're more afraid of you than you are of them :) Wait a minute - so they don't like it, I don't like it... so why are we doing this?
- HCIdivision17 11y ago
  It's the theological equivalent of "eat your vegetables". The link to Penn's commentary explains it reasonably well: no one wants to tackle another person, but you'd do it to stop someone from getting hit by a truck. Likewise, if you're sincere in thinking educating others of the theological risks can save their life - like you're not just going through the church-on-sunday motions, personal feelings take a back seat. To them it's too important to let petty things get in the way. Naturally, this can backfire pretty hard. But that's the cost of taking the faith seriously.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> It doesn't need to be high, though, since the risk and reward is so high (failure means more lost, success is a life). I think the risk:reward is often seen as higher than it should be even given the "going to hell" assumption, because the failure cost of the attempt is seen as capped at zero because alienation is not considered. This might make sense in a context where your particular door-to-door attempt was very likely to be the only exposure to Christianity that the target would ever have, but (since alienation of an unbeliever in that case would have the same effect as not making that particular door-to-door conversion attempt), but somewhat unlikely in the modern world.
- HCIdivision17 11y ago
  Nicely put. This is exactly why there was (is?) quite a lot of effort in finding effective alternatives to the door-to-door method. There's still a lot of people who aren't modern (and the 'no person left behind' policy dictates that you'd continue to do door-to-door to sweep them up), but alternatives are needed.
  - davepage 11y ago
    In terms of moral introspection, I perceive a continuum of information quality from vague suspicion to almost complete certainty. Morally, I would have a very, very difficult time making life-changing affirmative moral arguments to complete strangers without almost complete certainty. And, I could never, never ascribe almost complete certainty to a piece of information not complying with the vacuum intellect test (i.e. could an intelligent person not exposed to culture reasonably be expected to arrive at a similar conclusion, if given sufficient resources for independent experimentation). So, quantum mechanics, as weird as it is, could pass the vacuum intellect test. Could I personally see a vacuum intellect reinventing the tenets of Christianity including the concept of hell? That seems completely implausible to me. Sure, one could argue divine intervention (again) -- but that violates the vacuum constraint. So, question: By what moral thesis does one permit one's self to venture out into the world and attempt to convince other people to redirect their limited resources onto something which is not almost completely certain?

littlepooghish 11y ago

> If the person at the door preachin' the word looks awkward and is stammering, be kind - they're more afraid of you than you are of them :) Wait a minute - so they don't like it, I don't like it... so why are we doing this?

HCIdivision17 11y ago
It's the theological equivalent of "eat your vegetables". The link to Penn's commentary explains it reasonably well: no one wants to tackle another person, but you'd do it to stop someone from getting hit by a truck. Likewise, if you're sincere in thinking educating others of the theological risks can save their life - like you're not just going through the church-on-sunday motions, personal feelings take a back seat. To them it's too important to let petty things get in the way. Naturally, this can backfire pretty hard. But that's the cost of taking the faith seriously.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> It doesn't need to be high, though, since the risk and reward is so high (failure means more lost, success is a life). I think the risk:reward is often seen as higher than it should be even given the "going to hell" assumption, because the failure cost of the attempt is seen as capped at zero because alienation is not considered. This might make sense in a context where your particular door-to-door attempt was very likely to be the only exposure to Christianity that the target would ever have, but (since alienation of an unbeliever in that case would have the same effect as not making that particular door-to-door conversion attempt), but somewhat unlikely in the modern world.

HCIdivision17 11y ago
Nicely put. This is exactly why there was (is?) quite a lot of effort in finding effective alternatives to the door-to-door method. There's still a lot of people who aren't modern (and the 'no person left behind' policy dictates that you'd continue to do door-to-door to sweep them up), but alternatives are needed.
- davepage 11y ago
  In terms of moral introspection, I perceive a continuum of information quality from vague suspicion to almost complete certainty. Morally, I would have a very, very difficult time making life-changing affirmative moral arguments to complete strangers without almost complete certainty. And, I could never, never ascribe almost complete certainty to a piece of information not complying with the vacuum intellect test (i.e. could an intelligent person not exposed to culture reasonably be expected to arrive at a similar conclusion, if given sufficient resources for independent experimentation). So, quantum mechanics, as weird as it is, could pass the vacuum intellect test. Could I personally see a vacuum intellect reinventing the tenets of Christianity including the concept of hell? That seems completely implausible to me. Sure, one could argue divine intervention (again) -- but that violates the vacuum constraint. So, question: By what moral thesis does one permit one's self to venture out into the world and attempt to convince other people to redirect their limited resources onto something which is not almost completely certain?