the question was asked..." Why is it so frequently assumed that one wishes to persuade another?"

well, built into the very fabric of many Christian denominations is the concept of Evangelism and 'witnessing'. World-wide ministeries converting the 'heathen' and saving souls....

I have been preached 'at' from street corners, bus seats, park benches and stages. I have had phamphlets mailed to me, stuffed under my winshield wipers, thrust into my hand at bus stops and hidden in pleas for charities.

I endure regular door knocking campaigns from various denominations. I have been accosted by teenage girls at airports who wanted to read me bible verses. I have had old friends who had been 'reborn' contact me on the pretense of just 'getting together'...and then,,,*sigh*.

Yes, some denomination are more...ummmm...forward...about this than others, but there are specific admonitions in the bible to become 'fishers of men' and other metaphors which all lead to the same conclusion...it is not 'done' until all are followers of the same creed.

'Witnessing' is not always loud, offensive and ostentatious....sometimes it is quiet, gentle and subtle....and even accompanied by genuine help and aid to people, and that is VERY hard to complain about- but the message is never far below the surface.

I cannot dispute that many people would be lost without their 'faith' and the attendant ceremonies and relationships, but not everyone needs this, and those who do not are VERY often made to feel awkward and frustrated when it is pressed on them by prayers at football games and meetings NOT directly connected with religion. (I recently watched a Jewish member of my wood group manage to slip out of the room to avoid the before-supper-prayer invoking Jesus as the answer to all our problems!)...I was NOT so clever as he was. One member of this group hands out a cute little wooden puzzles....with bible verses printed on it.

etc...etc......." Why is it so frequently assumed that one wishes to persuade another?"...*rolling my eyes towards...Heaven?* I have no idea whether anyone clicked on my link above, but here are several items which can be found there:

"Philosophy, as it has traditionally been practiced, has been an attempt to step outside our customs and practices in the hope of gaining a nonlocal perspective on how things really are." "Since the young are not able to distinguish myth from reality, the tales they hear at their mother's knee provide the means by which the appetites can travel up and infect the norms and values of the developing person. In youth, we begin taking in psychological content and structure, before we know how to distinguish truth from falsity. At a later stage of development, we attempt to take in true beliefs and expel falsehoods. However, if we already have a falsehood inside our psyches, even in mythic form, we will end up taking in more and more falsehood (as though it were true) and getting rid of more and more truth (as though it were false). Introduce this initial virus, and our intake-expulsion machine will start pumping in the wrong direction. That is why having falsehood inside the psyche is what humans loathe most of all."

Jonathan Lear, Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul

"A man in a state of emotional disturbance, whether as the result of love or enthusiasm for a cause, is like someone who wears blue spectacles and insists, in perfect good faith, that the world is blue."

Andre Maurois, Proust: Portrait of A Genius

and finally, the one which strikes me as relevant in the face of recent events:

"The world of a man who believes that God created him for a specific purpose, that he has an immortal soul, that there is an afterlife in which his sins will be visited upon him, is radically different from the world of a man who believes in none of these things; and the reasons for action, the moral codes, the political beliefs, the tastes, the personal relationships of the former will deeply and systematically differ from those of the latter."

Isaiah Berlin, The Purpose of Philosophy