@ikno – When I overhear my non-Jewish or irreligious contemporaries, I hate hearing the stuff they talk about…. It’s usually cruddy. If I say something, though, most of the time they respect my preferences, as I’m a minority whose lifestyle they find to be different and interesting.
At the same time, I know gentiles and irreligious Jews who constantly encourage me to go out there into the shmutz and make my own informed decision whether I want to continue making life “hard” for me. I (politely) tell them to buzz off most of the time.
I don’t bother explaining to them my logic, because these guys never listen.
There’s a story of an off-the-derech man who came to a rabbi with a lot of controversial “questions.” The rabbi asked, “Did you have these questions before or after you became irreligious?” The man answered, “Afterward.” The rabbi (if I’m understanding this story correctly) informed him that he wouldn’t be able to give the man answers that he’d find satisfactory. In short, the man already had an idea in his head and wanted to simply ratify his misguided outlook.