I did something similar: I went out and bought a book for them that was written for straight people with a gay family member coming out of the closet, intended to help them understand better.

OT but Tom, would you mind sharing the name of that book?

I find this can be true when simply telling christians that I am an atheist, but on those occasions that I actually have tried to explain why I don’t believe, I am quickly met with defensiveness and hurt feelings, if not outright hostility, from the same christians.

When you write something, you can edit it before you hand it over. If you do it verbally, one wrong phrase can bollocks the whole thing up, especially if they are likely to have a strongly anti-atheist reaction.

I’ve started this discussion with my Christian wife, but she is still under the impression that I’m simply going through a phase of doubt. Eventually we will have the conversation that this isn’t a “phase” of doubt. I’ve been a Christian for most of my life and examined and studied religion from every angle. My conclusion is the Bible is nothing more than a combination of archaic folklore, primitive teaching, and fictional accounts.

Eventually my wife will understand my position through respectful face to face discussions. Unless she discovers my blog or reads my email like ATL-Apostate’s wife did. That would speed up the process.

I took the book home and carefully read every page of it. I took a green highlighter and marked things I thought were particularly good or relevant. I took a red highlighter and marked things I thought were wrong or irrelevant. (Of course there were few of the latter or I wouldn’t have bought the book.) I wrote a letter in which I came out of the closet and explained the book, packaged it all up, and mailed it to them. I waited two weeks (it was some years ago and the mail was slow) and then phoned them to talk about it.

I then learned the major failing point of this whole strategy: “able to read it at their convenience” also means “able to refuse to read it at all and work themselves into a tizzy about what they imagine it says (even though it doesn’t) because they won’t read it.”

The ad at the top of the page: “Meet Christian Singles here”

Here’s a link to the screenshot: http://bit.ly/hvIzF

Too funny!