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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Mar 18, 2021 19:19:51 GMT
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Post by gadreel on Mar 18, 2021 21:52:47 GMT
She’s 98, so have you considered just pretending to return to the fold for a few years? That way she dies with some piece of mind. Or is she just about controlling outward appearances and don’t really care what you actually believe? Down at the senior living facility, many of the old dames are into their Jesus and I just nod along. Of course, this isn’t a personal situation for me. Yeah... no. My mother is a narcissist. Control is her deal, and she has been trying to control my life from the word 'go'. It's not about peace of mind for her, it's about having the last word. I am not the daughter she wanted, and I am punished for being myself instead of being her sycophant. My Dad genuinely loved me and we got along on other issues - we were both passionate about environmental issues and ethical treatment of animals, we built stuff together and delighted in a trip to the hardware store, but my mother was never about anything but getting attention. And her involvement in church activities got her that attention. My Dad did church stuff, too, but always behind the scenes, never in the limelight like my mother. He was a simple, good, kind man. He didn't have a knowledge of psychological terminology, so when he told me, as an adult, that "Your mother is a bottomless, black hole of need of attention", I suspected he had been watching Dr. Phil while my mother was out of the house. I did lie to my Dad on his deathbed, telling him that I had a little talk with Jesus (lie) and wherever Dad was going, that's where I was going, too (true - six foot under). I wanted him to have that peace of mind, no matter how delusional it was. But that was in 2004, and my mother knows what I told him was a lie. Passive head-nodding isn't going to fool her, and I just refuse to act like something I'm not, just so she can feel like she won. I have a right to my own life, my own priorities, and I will not let her control me anymore. That ended when I married an atheist. Again, Dad accepted my husband as a good human being and they, too, had a good relationship. But my mother? No f-ing way. They never did get along, though my husband tried to find some common ground. He knew what she was, but he still tried to form some relationship. Never happened. That sounds awful, sorry.
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Mar 22, 2021 17:19:58 GMT
Yeah... no. My mother is a narcissist. Control is her deal, and she has been trying to control my life from the word 'go'. It's not about peace of mind for her, it's about having the last word. I am not the daughter she wanted, and I am punished for being myself instead of being her sycophant. My Dad genuinely loved me and we got along on other issues - we were both passionate about environmental issues and ethical treatment of animals, we built stuff together and delighted in a trip to the hardware store, but my mother was never about anything but getting attention. And her involvement in church activities got her that attention. My Dad did church stuff, too, but always behind the scenes, never in the limelight like my mother. He was a simple, good, kind man. He didn't have a knowledge of psychological terminology, so when he told me, as an adult, that "Your mother is a bottomless, black hole of need of attention", I suspected he had been watching Dr. Phil while my mother was out of the house. I did lie to my Dad on his deathbed, telling him that I had a little talk with Jesus (lie) and wherever Dad was going, that's where I was going, too (true - six foot under). I wanted him to have that peace of mind, no matter how delusional it was. But that was in 2004, and my mother knows what I told him was a lie. Passive head-nodding isn't going to fool her, and I just refuse to act like something I'm not, just so she can feel like she won. I have a right to my own life, my own priorities, and I will not let her control me anymore. That ended when I married an atheist. Again, Dad accepted my husband as a good human being and they, too, had a good relationship. But my mother? No f-ing way. They never did get along, though my husband tried to find some common ground. He knew what she was, but he still tried to form some relationship. Never happened. That sounds awful, sorry. Yeah, it was... thanks. Explains a bit of why I am atheist, right?
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Post by gadreel on Mar 22, 2021 19:05:28 GMT
That sounds awful, sorry. Yeah, it was... thanks. Explains a bit of why I am atheist, right? I guess, I think that is sad, that one persons broken ideas and misuse can turn you away from something. Not to say that you should not be an atheist or something, but more that it's really sad that so many people who profess to follow a religion, think that the following is the salvation, and don't do any of the work.
I'm hopeful that what ever you chose to believe that you can let go of and move past the damage your mother has done and find peace.
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Post by gadreel on Mar 22, 2021 19:07:35 GMT
Mine were not rational, and I am still fighting this battle with my 98 year old mother. She is still trying to bring me back into the fold. I've gone my own way as an adult, but my mother does not accept that and brings the subject up, directly or inferred, every time we communicate. It will be a wall between us until she has passed on. Or, as I would say, died. My Dad and I managed to have a good, supportive, genuine relationship, despite my atheism, but my mother is a whole different animal. She is very controlling. She will never reach around that wall, despite my attempts to connect on some other subject. I will always be the bad atheist daughter. She’s 98, so have you considered just pretending to return to the fold for a few years? That way she dies with some piece of mind. Or is she just about controlling outward appearances and don’t really care what you actually believe? Down at the senior living facility, many of the old dames are into their Jesus and I just nod along. Of course, this isn’t a personal situation for me. Good on you. So many people would want to push their views on people, I am really pleased you can look past yourself and support people where it does no one any harm. Such an advanced morality for someone who has rejected Gods love 
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Mar 22, 2021 20:02:21 GMT
Yeah, it was... thanks. Explains a bit of why I am atheist, right? I guess, I think that is sad, that one persons broken ideas and misuse can turn you away from something. Not to say that you should not be an atheist or something, but more that it's really sad that so many people who profess to follow a religion, think that the following is the salvation, and don't do any of the work.
I'm hopeful that what ever you chose to believe that you can let go of and move past the damage your mother has done and find peace.
I have found peace in choosing not to believe. I could never go back to being a person of faith, there are too many facts that contradict religion. My life is fact-based. After a cancer diagnosis at age 35, advances in medical science gave me another 30-some years and still counting. My mother made a show of "doing the work", I don't think she ever was genuine in her beliefs. People who are genuine believers, I don't chastise, they have the freedom to believe. It's just the ones who try to convert me back are the ones that I have a problem with. They don't allow me the same freedom to NOT believe. That smug arrogance that they "know" something that I don't, which has no empirical evidence to support it, just irritates the cr@p out of me. My cousins are prime examples. Their mother, my father's sister, died of the same cancer that I eventually was diagnosed with. It's genetic, people - praying didn't save your own mother, it just happened that at that point in time, medical science just wasn't advanced enough. I was only twelve years old at the time, and couldn't understand why a loving god would take away the mother of six children, one was just a toddler. I'm sure they have their "rationalization" worked out, but I never really could rationalize the conflict between science and faith. So, when advances in medical science put me into remission, that just solidified my world view. I'm not an atheist just because my mother was a bad Christian. Though she is the reason I didn't have any children; she was and still is a bad mother. I was afraid that I might hurt a child if I had one. My late husband thought I would have been a great mother, but then, his mother was far more abusive than mine. That bar was set really low. And he, too, was atheist, long before he met me. He had an extremely high IQ, much higher than mine, and in a way science had saved him, too - he stopped having a criminal record because he started to study science. His records as a juvenile were sealed at 18, and he never looked back. He became a kind-hearted secular humanist that randomly and anonymously gave away money to people or animals that were in need. I saw just two incidents; at his funeral, a friend and colleague wrote in the pages of a blank book that I had sitting out for friends to write in, that I would never know how many people he had helped; she was one of them. Honestly, all of my atheist friends behave more humanely than most card-carrying Christians do nowadays. There are some really hateful religious people out there.
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Mar 22, 2021 21:16:26 GMT
Good on you. So many people would want to push their views on people, I am really pleased you can look past yourself and support people where it does no one any harm. Such an advanced morality for someone who has rejected Gods love Love is not exclusive to Christians. Nor is morality.
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Post by gadreel on Mar 23, 2021 1:01:49 GMT
Good on you. So many people would want to push their views on people, I am really pleased you can look past yourself and support people where it does no one any harm. Such an advanced morality for someone who has rejected Gods love Love is not exclusive to Christians. Of course it is
no seriously I was only writing the last line a joke, i feel like love must be exclusive to something as so few people seem to have it, sorry if the last line took away from the comment it was supposed to be flippant. I just wanted to say I thought it was great that someone can be like you are when so many people on the planet are so selfish.
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Post by gadreel on Mar 23, 2021 1:32:38 GMT
Of course it is
no seriously I was only writing the last line a joke, i feel like love must be exclusive to something as so few people seem to have it, sorry if the last line took away from the comment it was supposed to be flippant. I just wanted to say I thought it was great that someone can be like you are when so many people on the planet are so selfish.
At the heart of love is justice. Doing evil when a person believes they are doing good is why the philosophers say, only religion can make good people do unjust and even evil things. The faith called Christianity, as I once experienced it myself, is a religion of love if one actually reads the Synoptic Gospels. This “agape movement” was not Jesus’ invention, as he was preaching what many others probably were also. The recent discovery of the Essenes movement contemporary to Jesus bears this out. Jesus never damned anyone. He didn’t punish people, nor gave his disciples permission to do this for being a weak human being. Certainly, in a civil society, we need civil laws, but these laws are to stop criminal behavior, not “sin.” However, the institution of religion, ie the Church, believes in an earthly punishment for sin, as they perceive it, and do not believe in an agape gospel. Time and again, they have ignored Jesus’ great commandments. Though they mistake their zeal to damn, condemn, and sometimes murder as love. You know, they burned heretics out of “love.” That is the perversion of Jesus’ teachings I cannot tolerate. My own atheist standing is I believe in no Gods per se, but this does not mean I believe there is not an ultimate goal “in mind” for us from the universe. I think human intellectual awareness goes beyond our material five senses. I intuit this, it’s a little wooey, but I do not expect others to follow my particular spiritual path. So I don’t preach it other than to call for justice. Whats the phrase? "we should interpret the bible through the medium of love, as opposed to interpreting love from the writings of the bible". Yeah when it comes to exclusion and failing to display love, I think the organisations that represent the abrahamic religions are very far from the mark, I have had issues with both the major Christian churches in the last 4 years, including having to argue with a Catholic priest as to why it is unfair to expect my 8 year old to understand what she is signing up for. no it's not wooey, in fact I am pretty sure science is talking about more than just the 5 senses but I get what you are driving at. im pretty sure Jesus would call out most of the major Christian organisations that exists today.
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Post by rizdek on Mar 24, 2021 23:51:58 GMT
And not just which religion...but which sect or denomination. Christianity has many variations and many are such that believing/following one precludes you from 'being' the other. And even if some variety of Christianity might be true, Christ claimed that many would believe themselves to be Christians yet not be saved.
And of course...there's the rub. Who knows for sure what the 'will of his Father' is? I can't imagine ANY who seriously claim to be Christian intentionally ignoring the will of the Father...yet Christ said there would be some so unless he's lying/wrong, there must be some who think themselves saved but aren't.
I have concluded that I might be just as well off not following/believing in any god or gods because the 'real TM God might be a jealous god and he might be madder at me for worshiping the wrong god than worshiping no god.
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Post by NJtoTX on Apr 4, 2021 13:21:00 GMT
Being Jewish growing up, but never hearing anything about God in my family, just how people would look at us and torture us and how we had good comedians and "don't go out looking like that on Yom Kippur" and hearing Yiddish words so the kids wouldn't understand and how they didn't like the wealthy who belonged to the temple and being sent to Hebrew school as a half-assed thing and getting sent to a Jewish kosher summer camp where I learned songs phonetically...
I was sort of Jewish. My mom once asked if I believed in God and I said I think so, and she agreed, but we weren't convincing.
Then at one point I thought deism might be a thing - Maybe we were some tiny blip in time and space that was part of a more expansive indifferent universe and created in some way by something physically huge where our universe was part of a more massive one, as we were like a microscopic system not aware of the plant and animal kingdoms, but it became less and less plausible and still required a beginning.
So now - I am an agnostic atheist. I will never claim there is no god, but I do believe that every religion is incapable and will always be incapable of stating and proving the truth, and I cannot ever be convinced of any supernatural truth. I get why people need that belief as a pacifier or for community, and I certainly would be less depressed if I could just suck that teat, but the ends don't justify the means, and I'm not going to fake it.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2021 13:27:21 GMT
I didnt. It chose me. Well I guess my parents did. Baptized
Im not religious but Im not against it either. 50/50 on a 'God' existing
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