Explain why trying to convert people may cause problems in a multi-faith society?

Answer 1

People have made up their own minds about what they want to believe or not believe. This is why persons 'right' to not be harassed for their belief is at least in principal generally accepted in western cultures. Many understand the origin of this to have come from dissenting Christians who wanted to worship as they chose. In any case where this is not respected, or is one sided, it causes problems, such as it does even here on this site, where Christian views are constantly ridiculed, even by supervisors.

Trying to convert people, and ridiculing people for their belief, as well as denying certain empirically established facts about faiths, is tantamount to an attempt to get people to abandon their faith and adopt the faith, or non-faith of the person doing the ridiculing. Such attacks only cause either amusement, when they demonstrate gross ignorance or resentment when they are either persistent, hostile, or contain material which degrades either the faith and its details, or the persons who hold such faith. The denial of empirical evidence, in the case of Christianity in particular, evidences desperation, and the elevation of a skeptical opinion to the level of actual evidence demonstrates a desperate desire for evidence which does not exist.

In any case, all such efforts are mis-guided in that they make certain unfounded assumptions about the people who hold for example, the Christian faith. The assumptions are that all such are ignorant and even idiotic for holding such superstition in an age of science and that ignoring the abundant evidence somehow makes it go away and puts Christianity into the basket of 'pure faith.' Such attempts at reality denial are. along with Richard Dawkins publicly stated aim to 'kill religion', misguided and unwelcome, even if tolerated where they are supposedly not allowed.