I was asked by an Xtian if I decorated for Christmas.
When I answered "NO" - I got the questions I have heard before.
"Are you against Religion? Are you against Christmas."
(Religion is bad - so yes I am against religion)
Any of you here get these same questions?
How do you handle them?
I was just pointing out some developed countries, not ones where such violence occurs.
I remember the thrill I felt when my doctor told me there was an expected baby that a mother wanted to put up for adoption at birth. That news, after seven years of wanting a baby and five miscarriages, I had a possibility of adopting a baby.
I also remember the thrill when my doctor told me I was pregnant again. I asked him if there were medical contraindication for going ahead with the adoption and he replied there were no medical reasons, so we started planning for adoption and a biological birth five months later.
I also remember the thrill when my doctor told me I was pregnant with twins! New change of plans: prepare for the adoptions and twins five months lather.
Cary was born; five months and thirteen days later Craig and Laura were born! The adventure of a lifetime began.
The thrills I felt I attributed to god; I believed in supernatural things then. When unsolvable problems occurred that would not end, I know I had to find another way to see myself in relation to reality; I had to find different ways of solving my challenges. I discovered emptiness in my belief in god and my faith. I called out and no one was there with workable solutions. Oh, yes! I got the "Passive Gospel". A lot of good that did us. I had to go deeper. I had to run away. I ended the beatings and put-downs and discounts and trivializations and demonizations and domination. God didn't do that for me, nor did prayer, nor did the council of my religious community. They stood in the way of my full participation in life and living.
As time went on I realized I needed to express my gratefulness, give voice to my sense of wonder, to see myself and my life in terms of being part of this vast, huge universe. There was not a master planner out there with a plan for my life, there was no rescuer, there was no purpose assigned to my existence, there was no heaven or hell. All I had was me!
And I am enough. I am the one responsible to define myself and create a plan for my life and I already had all the information I needed to know what was right from wrong, good from bad, healthy from unhealthy. There is no heaven or hell and I have the power to think and act, to be complete and to have communities of people I love and who love me.
I stand with full gratitude for being and doing and belonging and thinking and participating in this magnificent universe. I celebrate the important things in life, not the fables and fairy tales or delusions of others. I don't have to deny myself; I have the right and responsibility to give voice to my needs, wants and desires and my profound gratitude for being alive and conscience of what is true.
Joan, your words are always so uplifting! I am so glad that, as a young person just starting to make my own way in the world, I am able to draw on your strength and experience. :)
Humble Pie and Matthew T. Thank you for your kind words and support. I must be sure to add that the process of going from dependent to counter-dependent to independent leads ultimately to inter-dependent and then to dependent.
I am at a stage of life at 77 years old that I will soon return to dependent. I do not brag or complain, it is the way of life and each developmental stage has taught me very important lessons.
The message I want to send, is that each one matters. Don't let others put you down, or discount you, or trivialize you, or exploit you, or demonize you, or dominate you. You are alive and have every right to be. And you are not alone; we are Homo sapiens and need others, not only to survive but to thrive.
Further, I want to express my profound love of life and the Earth upon which I reside.
Thanks for being here to read and respond to my words.
Mostly, I support and even defend people's right to believe in anything that they want to believe in. WITH LIMITATIONS!!!
If their beliefs have no basis in reality are possibly harmful to humanity and they push these beliefs onto others. I will attack their beliefs without reservation nor care for their personal feelings.
Yes, if they cross that fine line between personal belief in garbage and preaching garbage, they suddenly have an enemy that will hound and attack them relentlessly.
This is why I continually attack those Xtians on the Australian ABC religious forum, which I originally joined to defend science against attacks from a handful of creationists, I've destroyed many of the creationists arguments and hardly any exist on this forum now though there are still Xtians pushing absolutely ridiculous views and anti-atheist propaganda http://www2b.abc.net.au/tmb/Client/TopicList.aspx?b=87&dm=1
So I continue to attack them as 'goiday_myd' the MyD stands for "Doctor Of Mythology" without any real regard for their personal self-image nor feelings.
I believe in calling a spade a spade and a naive, proselytizing idiot a raving lunatic.
Aye M8z! :-D
G'Day, I'm with you about calling a spade a spade and "proselytizing idiot a raving lunatic."
It's clearly the reason I am here. One of my Christian school classmates said, upon finding out that I was an atheist, "But _______, you know the Bible better than any of us!" They set themselves up for my reply.
"Yeah, that's why I'm an atheist."
Respect individuals means very much to me. I, however do not respect nor will I remain silent in the face of delusions or denial or lies. Silence is not and never has been the answer to tyranny.
Not be antagonistic? That is exactly what I want to be; I want to antagonize those who face me with words that make no sense. No, I have no interest in war paint and hunting scalps because I am not of that character.
My intent is to be specific, clear, articulate, accurate and rational; not to hide behind silly words or veiled meanings.
No, we are not going to change things overnight. The Stone Age didn’t end because humans ran out of stones; they used their minds and bodies and behaviors to move into the Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age and Iron Age, etc. Were there people trying to prevent them from moving into a new Age? I suspect so. Maybe not. However, with Homo sapiens development, came the inquiring mind, the inventive spirit, the risk taking adventure. None of them waited for permission or asked for authority to move on.
Should the burning times return there are enough human beings who know the evil of such values and resist the impulse to be victims of ignorance.
Honor? There is no honor in remaining silent and doing nothing in face of domination.
Peaceful? When has humankind benefited by exploitation?
Accepting others with different beliefs? Of course each person is entitled to his or her beliefs even as not all beliefs exist as equal.
Giving in to positions of power never, in all history, has been the strategy for survival. Never has and never will be. Even the animal kingdom does not gain by giving in; animals learn how to hide, run, sting, fly, or outsmart other animals.
Who cares about decorations, or displays, or folly, or bowing down in submission to some other or those who relinquish thinking to another or to a dogma our of the Stone Age? That is not what this is all about. These are trivial matters of no consequence.
Creating cognitive dissonance is what I am about. I want people to think before they feel their way and mine into oblivion.
Oh, my dear friend, religion IS the problem. It suited human thinking until we could replace such thinking with new information, new understanding, new knowledge. As we learned, we discarded crutches and mind-binders and moved on with evolution. It is not “just” a theory; it is a theory that explains existence far better than any bible verse or Qur’an verse I ever read.
Abusing priests and ministers did not just happen; they were created by faulty thinking, errors in reasoning, laziness of action, evilness of intention. To call such attitudes and behaviors as “thorns in the flesh”, insults human potential. They discredit human ability to rise above behavior of beasts into what it truly means to be human.
Homo sapiens, the reasonable animal;
Latin hom, man + Latin sapins, wise, rational, present participle of sapere, to be wise.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published byHoughton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Peter, I respect your challenge to me and value your input. I appreciate your gentle nature, in fact, these problems need people such as yourself to grease the skids. I, on the other hand, have something to say, I have a history that affirms my thinking and actions and I honor that about me.