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At a particular level, anyway. I fight tooth and claw with my mother over her belief rainbows are a personal surety from god that he won't do the flood thing again.
But there's a point I won't go to and to be honest - she's 80. If it makes her feel better between workouts at the gym, well, what the hell.
At RRS there's always some one else who believes exactly the same thing to take out your frustrations on.
Of course, if you told her what you just told us, she might respect your decision...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Over the past few years my parents have hinted toward a belief in god ~ however in true 'my parents' fashion...they don't talk too much about it (same with politics).
I find that the older people in my family really cling to religion, almost in desperation. . . it hurts my heart to think I would squash the strange calm their belief gives them by arguing my side. . . it is something I struggle with and I walk a fine line when around them. However, when it comes to non-family members, that emotional connection I have isn't as strong and I have no problem being more assertive in my discussions.
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
Welcome!
Anyone who preaches at me gets an earfull. My parents never preached to me. Noone in my family has, lucky for them. But to each their own, I say.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
My mum is very calm about her impending demise and looks forward to meeting jesus, seeing dad and serious group hugs after biscuits. It's not a balloon I want to prick, despite my realisation that my eternal future is not being given similar consideration.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Man, my dad goes nuts if you start talking about belief, worst of all, he's a Christian. He always preaches his gibber jabber across the house when I visit him, I'm a bit argumentative but overall I think it's a bit hilarious for some odd reason.
"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them." ~Galileo Galilei
If that is what felt right to you, then you did the right thing.
As long as your mom is not actively persecuting atheists I doubt you would gain anything from the debate besides pain and family disfunction.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I agree.
In general, I try to keep quiet about my atheism, especially around people I know. Usually, people won't listen to your reasoning at all, and it can hurt your relationship. It's just not worth it.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
I only ever had this problem to my extent with any maternal grandfather, a Jehovah's Witness. And he was never really pushy with it, just occasionally would try to 'explain' a few things to me. I didn't really try to argue with him, just let him have his say, made a few non-commital responses.
He was the only JW in the extended family, AFAIK, and everyone else just let him do his thing.
The 'funny' story was that he married my grandmother just before one of the early End Times predictions of the JW's, in 1914, to get in before it happened. So if it hadn't been for his crazy belief, he may not have married then, or at all, or married someone else, history would have been different, and I would not have ultimately been born as 'me'.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Haha, that reminds me of how my parents had a weird relationship to religion. My mom was a nun, my dad was a priest, and I'm an atheist. True story.
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