The evangelism techniques of unspecified "religion" are actually pretty ineffective. Religions have a poor record of converting new believers who are already adults; religions spread by being the religion of the oppressor (so that the oppressed can join and gain more political power), focusing on children, and/or the precursor memes of the society that one is evangelizing in already point towards some of the religion's tenets. What religions do have are thought patterns and social sanctions that prevent one from thinking too far outside of that religion (i.e. dark arts epistemology). Religion is good at retaining people who are already converts, not making new ones.
Let's take Christianity as an example. One of the reasons that it was successful in the Roman Empire was that a lot of the underlying themes of Christianity fit well within the wider Greco-Roman culture. Greeks/Romans were already exposed to concepts like dying/rising gods, virgin births, the concept of hell, martyrdom, etc. before Christianity. Even the etymology of the word "evangelism" has deep roots to Greco-Roman military culture. Another thing that (orthodox) Christianity had going for it was that it was marketed by Christians as an "ancient" religion tying its heritage to Judaism; Greco-Roman culture was especially suspicious of new gods or novel religions.
Even so, Christianity around 300 AD was about the same size as Mormonism is today. What prompted the true spread of Christianity was gaining the political power of the Roman Empire with Constantine's conversion, in essence becoming part of the "cultural language" of the Roman Empire. Meaning that anywhere Roman culture spread, Christianity spread as well. This is why Christianity is relatively unsuccessful in parts of the world that aren't directly or indirectly descended from the Roman empire (India, Japan, etc.). Even for atheists in the west, Christianity is part of our cultural language, so many converts to Christianity are simply confusing familiarity and veracity.
Continuing with the Mormons: Their evangelism is actually failing in the first world, so they are moving their evangelism efforts to the global south like many other versions of Christianity. Which makes sense in a way, since economic inequality seems to make people more susceptible to religious belief.
I think rational (i.e. effective) evangelism would model something more, well, effective, like advertizing/marketing or hostage negotiation.
EDIT: I would also like to point out that another persuasion technique is storytelling. People seem to temporarily assume the morality of characters they read in stories. The LW community sort of already has this with HPMOR.
Even for atheists in the west, Christianity is part of our cultural language, so many converts to Christianity are simply confusing familiarity and veracity.
I thought the link went to The What-You’d-Implicitly-Heard-Before Telling Thing on Slate Star Codex.
Not "rationality evangelism", which CFAR is doing already if I understand their mission. "Rational evangelism", which is what CFAR would do if they were Catholic missionaries.
If you believe in Hell, as many people very truly do, it is hard for Hell not to seem like the world's most important problem.
To some extent, proselytizing religions treat Hell with respect--they spend billions of dollars trying to save sinners, and the most devout often spend their lives preaching the Gospel (insert non-Christian variant).
But is Hell given enough respect? Every group meets with mixed success in solving its problems, but the problem of eternal suffering leaves little room for "mixed success". Even the most powerful religions are stuck in patterns that make the work of salvation very difficult indeed. And some seem willing to reduce their evangelism* for reasons that aren't especially convincing in the face of "nonbelievers are quite possibly going to burn, or at least be outside the presence of God, forever".
What if you were a rationalist who viewed Hell like certain Less Wrongers view the Singularity? (This belief would be hard to reconcile with rationalism generally, but for the sake of argument...) How would you tackle the problem of eternal suffering with the same passion we spend on probability theory and friendly AI?
I wrote a long thought experiment to better define the problem, involving a religion called "Normomism", but it was awkward. There are plenty of real religions whose members believe in Hell, or at least in a Heaven that many people aren't going to (also a terrible loss). Some have a stated mission of saving as many people as possible from a bad afterlife.
So where are they falling short?
If you were the Pope, or the Caliph, or the supreme dictator of some smaller religion, what tactics would you use to convince more people to do and believe exactly the things that would save them--whether that's faith or good works? Why haven't these tactics been tried already? Is there really much room for improvement?
Spreading the Word
This post isn't a dig at believers, though it does seem like many people don't act on their sincere belief in an eternal afterlife. (I don't mind when people try to convert me--at least they care!)
My main point: It's worth considering that people who believe in Very Bad Future Outcomes have been working to prevent those outcomes for thousands of years, and have stumbled upon formidable techniques for doing so.
I've thought for a while about rational evangelism, and it's surprisingly hard to come up with ways that people like Rick Warren and Jerry Lovett could improve their methodology. (Read Lovett's "contact me" paragraph for the part that really impressed me.)
We speak often of borrowing from religion, but these conversations mostly touch on social bonding, rather than what it means to spread ideas so important that the fate of the human race depends on them. ("Raising the Sanity Waterline" is a great start, but those ideas haven't been the focus of many recent posts.)
I'm not saying this is a perfect comparison. The rationalist war for the future won't be fought one soul at a time, and we won't save anyone with a deathbed confession.
But cryogenic freezing does exist. And on a more collective level, convincing the right people that the far future matters could be a coup on the level of Constantine's conversion.
CFAR is doing good things in the direction of rationality evangelism. How can the rest of us do more?
Living Like We Mean It
This movement is going places. But I fear we may spend too much time (at least proportionally) arguing amongst ourselves, when bringing others into the fold is a key piece of the puzzle. And if we’d like to expand the flock (or, more appropriately, the herd of cats), what can we learn from history’s most persuasive organizations?
I often pass up my chance to talk to people about something as simple as Givewell, let alone existential risk, and it's been a long time since I last name-dropped a Less Wrong technique. I don't think I'm alone in this.**
I've met plenty of Christians who exude the same optimism and conviviality as a Rick Warren or a Ned Flanders. These kinds of people are a major boon for the Christian religion. Even if most of us are introverts, what's stopping us from teaching ourselves to live the same way?
Still, I'm new here, and I could be wrong. What do you think?
* Text editor's giving me some trouble, but the link is here: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/practical-faith/evangelism-interfaith-world
** Peter Boghossian's Manual for Creating Atheists has lots to say about using rationality techniques in the course of daily life, and is well worth reading, though the author can be an asshole sometimes.