[All Your Pie]

As an atheist (much as I dislike beginning a sentence in that particular manner), I have no problem with someone sharing their faith with me in a general sense. Religious expression or even a polite discussion for the sake of clarity are no issue to me, whether they come from a friend or a stranger. An actual conversion attempt is where things get a bit prickly for me.

For starters, as a rule I avoid trying to tell other people how to live their lives regarding religion, and I tend to expect the same courtesy in kind. Of course, some faiths expect their followers to spread it, so this isn't a hard and fast guideline. Method is important, though. If a stranger or even a friend tells me I'm sinning (or, generally speaking, that my behavior is bad for any purely religious reason) then my patience will evaporate rather quickly. Sin doesn't mean anything to me on its own--it doesn't meet a standard of harm to myself or to other people that I would expect from someone asking me to change how I act, and I'm not interesting in choosing my spirituality based on shame or fear. At risk of generalizing, I imagine many other non-spiritual people feel similarly that sin is a rhetorical dead end for them.

Encouraging spirituality as a method for leading a happier, fulfilling life is a more respectful tactic that I'm more open to listening to. That said, I would only accept the conceit of it from someone I knew fairly well, who I could reasonably trust knows what I want from life or is at least close enough to me to ask. Someone on the street could not effectively make this argument to me because I believe fulfillment is a personal matter--it's not one-size-fits-all. Even coming from someone I know, it would not be a conversation I would want to repeat--I would expect them to respect my final answer and not bring it up again unless prompted--unless, again, it was as a simple discussion rather than an attempt at conversion.

Obviously, this thread is an exception to a lot of these rules. It would be dishonest of me to voice my opinion and expect the people around me in this setting to keep theirs quiet. But, since more perspectives were asked for, I thought I might as well throw this one on the pile.