Originally Posted by
PTravel
When someone proselytizes for their religion, he is telling the targets of their efforts, "You are wrong and I am right!" That is rude and very, very disrespectful. Unless someone asks, please keep your religious beliefs to yourself. It has nothing to do with avoiding "inconvenience," and everything to do with avoiding offensive and discourteous disrespect.
I think that we pretty much agree on everything except the point above.
Barring "discussions" involving personal insults, physical threats, etc..., I don't see the difference between exchanging ideas regarding religion versus ideas regarding, say, science or academia. Why is it perfectly fine to discuss (and advance) theories on the orbit of planets but offensive and disrespectful to discuss (and advance) the possible existence of divine spaghetti? Both topics involve ideas that have a well-defined truth value (i.e. true or false, or if you wish, right or wrong) and concern the human understanding of reality. In the former case, people had a lot of wrong ideas about how the planets moved, but in the end, they had to write it off and try to look for the correct description. Restricting discussion about it (either through authority or plain complacency) only stagnated the area.