Not easy to ignore...
Offline My Dad has always been the one that gives me my little nudges keeping me going the right direction in life. Recently he got a DUI and now EVERYTHING he says has to do with the grace of god or divine intervention. I have tried to reason with him that me getting the job I had applied for was just due to my experience and not divine intervention, but he still thinks that god gave me that job. My question is: How do you deal with a newly brainwashed parent that thinks every little bit of chance can be attributed to divine intervention? I have already asked him how god gave me the job and left the other 100 people jobless, but he just falls into the whole "god has a plan" line of reasoning. He seems to go into and out of these "jesus phases" every 10 years or so. I know he is a smart enough man to reason that religion is all bullshit, but after any hardship he goes super christian on me.
My question is: How does someone go from a completely rational human to a jesus warrior in one instance? I'd hate to believe my own Dad can easily fall for religious thinking, as he is an intelligent person. What happens to people when they decide to convert to religion?
"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." - Bertrand Russell
Stewie: Yay and God said to Abraham, "you will kill your son, Issak", and Abraham said, I can't hear you, you'll have to speak into the microphone." "Oh I'm sorry, Is this better? Check, check, check... Jerry, pull the high end out, I'm still getting some hiss back here."
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perhaps this is a bit personal, but was your dad forced to go to AA because of the DUI? i know AA can really start people off on theistic bullshit. i still can't believe it's a government-endorsed program. no, wait, yes i can...but it damn well shouldn't be.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I think religional people get into that adoration and worship routine. Normal person will shake a hand with his favorite celebrity and ask for autogram, but religional people will go crazy. It's not a secret that I flirt with mysticism and mysticism is to religion like BIOS to user software, but it doesn't say to shut off reasoning. Nowhere in recent history God asked anyone to shut their brain off. It's only people who demand that.
OK, let's say that there is God that has a Plan of making people jobless, so you can get a job.
Even if your father knows what is God's plan and why, he can't magically make you know that too. Religion is not the only way to making right decisions, quite opposite
How can your father know what exactly is or isn't God's plan and why? Obviously, he was doing something wrong, that it was necessary for God to get him to Anonymous Alcoholics. God should be able to deal with normal people without these extreme measures. As Bender in Futurama said, the best method of doing God's work is such a way that people won't even know that God is there. (!!!!)
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Quit your job, move in with your dad and don't work another day of your life.
Tell him god told you to do it. God also told you that your dad needs to provide you with a $700/wk allowance.
All kidding aside, I wish I knew what made people so wishy-washy when it comes to the whole religious thing. As my parents get older they seem to be getting a bit more 'spiritual'. It is quite annoying. They raised us kids without a real religious base, my mom said recently she did that so that we could decide on our own(much respect to momz).
I wonder if it is age that does it to parents, their life is closer to being over and they are reflective of what they have done/said in their life and maybe a bit mad the fact that it will end. Maybe even a bit scared, as their imagination plays it out, of what will happen after they die.
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
Well, we can be certainly sure that the body will die and rot. The question is, if the consciousness itself is physical and to what extent, if the brain is or isn't only a receiving station of the consciousness.
My grandfather was religional for 50 years, he believed there will be rapture soon and the likes of him will not die, but be taken to Heaven. But he got old and sick like everyone else, he realized his own mortality and realized, that his faith was bullshit. He died as a broken man, ruined without the support of his faith. It was also very diffcult on my uncle, who is a caretaker and lived with grandfather far away. My uncle got a lot of gray hair because of the stress in these last two years, although he's younger than my dad. So the moral underline is, that faith or spirituality is very good for old dying people, or at least those who have to live with them and take care of them.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I know what its like. thinking that god gave you a job is not a totally brainwashed idea since a lot of people in this world give god credit for all the good things that happens in they're lives .
But last week, while coming home from school, i bumped into my mom in the bus. She said that god did it.I was actually stunned for a few seconds, and after that, i spent the hole ride home in silence trying to figure out how someone can believe that everything that happens is god's handywork.(now that's brainwashing)
"I don't believe in afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."
I realize some people get all enthused about their sports teams, but what gets me is why god/s/dess would give a rip. Why would s/he/it care which team won? Why pray to win? Why pray the other team loses? And the other team is praying your team will lose. Makes no sense to me.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
He didn't have to go to AA, and he isn't an alcoholic. He just happened to be stopped after meeting with some clients and having a couple beers. If he were a terrible alcoholic I could ALMOST see how getting a DUI could make him think he needed to make some serious life changes, but I don't understand what would make him go directly from a rational human to some sort of cult member. If you listen to him talk now it's like god makes every little thing happen, and it's all for a reason. While we all know that this is bullshit, people really believe that is how life works. It completely baffles me.
"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." - Bertrand Russell
Stewie: Yay and God said to Abraham, "you will kill your son, Issak", and Abraham said, I can't hear you, you'll have to speak into the microphone." "Oh I'm sorry, Is this better? Check, check, check... Jerry, pull the high end out, I'm still getting some hiss back here."
If god is so damn good and micro manages everything so perfectly, why didn't god just give him this euphoric experience without exposing other people to the deadly danger that is drunk driving?
Ah, but since he didn't kill anyone, it is part of God's plan. And if another drunk kills people, that's part of God's plan. You can't win, once a person is at that level you are trying to use external reason on a psychological issue that most of us have no qualifications to deal with. You can't disprove his idea because the idea is not falsifiable.
1. God makes everything happen
2. I know it is true because God says it is true
Within that conceptual framework anything can happen. They can even pick and choose whether or not something is God's plan, mans misinterpretation of God's plan, or Satan thwarting God's plan. It is the Willy Wonka Morality Factory.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Seconded, made my day.