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For someone who has reached retirement age, you seem inordinately self-centered. What does it cost you to let others have their beliefs and practices without having to contend with your OVERT disagreement or rejection??? What harm does it do to you to participate in attending practices you do not believe in or agree with? Do you care at all for your family? Do you care at all for their well-being and state of mind? Why would you want to upset them or hurt their feelings just to assuage your need to be true to your atheism? Grow up and get over yourself. No one needs to know what you really think. They just need to know you care about them.
The above is extraordinarily one sided. Apply all your questions to the believers...why can't they make big adjustments to respect the sensitivities of the non believers? How does this work, whoever is in the majority, then the minority has to pretend that they believe the same things?
And you of all posters to be advising others to just go along. Why have you not turned your advice on yourself and dropped your unique positions on the cosmos rather than continuing to pester the atheists who participate in this forum?
You have this uncanny knack to lecture others on a series of shortcomings that you astonishingly are never able to detect in yourself.
And I would add, it's one thing for me to be truthful to my friends from university, but quite another to fly the flag of atheism in the conservative community where I teach. I'd be shunned. It's happened before because of AR (Animal Rights) activism, and it is not fun.
I think one would need to employ the elements of respect, common decency, selfishness (inasmuch as you would not want to open up a volatile can of worms that could cause you stress, time or even danger in non-belief revealing) in a case by case basis in choosing to be upfront with one's beliefs.
Recently I have seen some Atheists form a raiding party, mount their horses with the flag an sword of Atheism flying and swinging and go charging into the Christianity Forum to rattle the Christian Apologists.
Maybe the C.A.'s raid our forum too, but I am slowly coming to the understanding that maybe that is what computer forums are for and it's an appropriate and acceptable venue for this. Anonymity can be kept, no one really gets hurt, many enjoy the battle, and some learning/understanding might come out of it once the dust settles.
Outside of a situation where belief is an implicit or explicit expectation/requirement, I don’t think there is anything unethical about not disclosing. My personal stance is this: my irreligion is my business; the only person I choose to be open about it with is my husband. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, but I don’t want it to reflect poorly on him (he’s a minister) because of it. Even though his church is a progressive denomination, I still think it would be an unpleasant shock. Consequently, because even in overcrowded NY everyone knows everyone, I choose not to discuss it; not with friends, not with extended family, hell, not even with our kids yet. I won’t lie if someone comes right out and asks, but at this point, people just assume I’m a christian.
For someone who has reached retirement age, you seem inordinately self-centered. What does it cost you to let others have their beliefs and practices without having to contend with your OVERT disagreement or rejection??? What harm does it do to you to participate in attending practices you do not believe in or agree with? Do you care at all for your family? Do you care at all for their well-being and state of mind? Why would you want to upset them or hurt their feelings just to assuage your need to be true to your atheism? Grow up and get over yourself. No one needs to know what you really think. They just need to know you care about them.
I will tell you why. It's because I have two moral red-lines, and one of them is that I believe it's harmful and repugnant to me for the helpless mind of a child to be indoctrinated into a religious belief. Any child, any religion. And a christening, in this case, is the beginning of that process which I happen to abhor. A process which I will neither appear to condone by my presence, nor be hypocritical enough to appear to "celebrate."
And I put this to you: Would YOU, if you knew that someone you love felt THAT strongly against a particular activity or event or scenario, expect them to "show how much they care about you" by being part of it? Or would you consider them "self centered" if they choose one of their deeply held principles over their "loyalty" to you?
I'd like to correct and expand on the above post which I wrote last night. First, the correction: I omitted an intended phrase, "so it's". What I intended to write was "I believe it's harmful and so it's repugnant to me for the helpless mind of a child to be indoctrinated.." Grammatically awkward even that way, I know. But I want to clarify that I didn't mean it was harmful to me. I feel that it's harmful to the child's worldview and thinking processes.
And to expand: I have attended weddings and funerals which have had a religious component. I have even attended a ceremony in which a friend of mine who was raised in the South converted from the Baptist faith to Judaism; she invited me to her mikvah and I attended. Why? Because she was making this decision as an adult, after going through all the thought processes involved on her own. Nobody influenced her or 'brainwashed' her into becoming a Jew. It's something she chose for herself and of course I respected that. If my grandchild were raised religion-free and then at 18 or 21 or 35 or 50 were to discover, after having reached the age of reason and the ability to look at things objectively, that a religious belief was something that she felt and needed in her life and asked me to attend her baptism, mikvah or other ceremony, of course I'd go.... because it would be her free choice. Not something that others were foisting upon her. THAT is what I object to. Not the belief itself, although I don't share it.
Also as to your comment that I should not "assuage my need to be true to my atheism". It seems like you misunderstood that what I'm being true to is my deeply held conviction that to indoctrinate a child into a religion is wrong. People choose to be true to their convictions all the time, or at least they should if they truly hold those convictions. Would you criticize a person who believes that abortion is murder, for refusing to drive a friend or family member to an abortion clinic if the other person asked them to? Or criticize a person who is adamantly opposed to hunting, for telling a friend or family member they cannot shoot animals while vacationing at the first person's home or land?
In other words: Do you believe that people should compromise (make exceptions to) deeply held principles -- whatever they may be -- for the sake of social convention or family ties?
I'd like to correct and expand on the above post which I wrote last night. First, the correction: I omitted an intended phrase, "so it's". What I intended to write was "I believe it's harmful and so it's repugnant to me for the helpless mind of a child to be indoctrinated.." Grammatically awkward even that way, I know. But I want to clarify that I didn't mean it was harmful to me. I feel that it's harmful to the child's worldview and thinking processes.
And to expand: I have attended weddings and funerals which have had a religious component. I have even attended a ceremony in which a friend of mine who was raised in the South converted from the Baptist faith to Judaism; she invited me to her mikvah and I attended. Why? Because she was making this decision as an adult, after going through all the thought processes involved on her own. Nobody influenced her or 'brainwashed' her into becoming a Jew. It's something she chose for herself and of course I respected that. If my grandchild were raised religion-free and then at 18 or 21 or 35 or 50 were to discover, after having reached the age of reason and the ability to look at things objectively, that a religious belief was something that she felt and needed in her life and asked me to attend her baptism, mikvah or other ceremony, of course I'd go.... because it would be her free choice. Not something that others were foisting upon her. THAT is what I object to. Not the belief itself, although I don't share it.
Also as to your comment that I should not "assuage my need to be true to my atheism". It seems like you misunderstood that what I'm being true to is my deeply held conviction that to indoctrinate a child into a religion is wrong. People choose to be true to their convictions all the time, or at least they should if they truly hold those convictions. Would you criticize a person who believes that abortion is murder, for refusing to drive a friend or family member to an abortion clinic if the other person asked them to? Or criticize a person who is adamantly opposed to hunting, for telling a friend or family member they cannot shoot animals while vacationing at the first person's home or land?
In other words: Do you believe that people should compromise (make exceptions to) deeply held principles -- whatever they may be -- for the sake of social convention or family ties?
Perhaps you do. I don't.
You have my sympathies. Dawkins rails on quite a bit about not using the phrase Christian Child, or Jewish Child or whatever. It seemed odd at first but I've come to agree. Or was it Harris?
You have my sympathies. Dawkins rails on quite a bit about not using the phrase Christian Child, or Jewish Child or whatever. It seemed odd at first but I've come to agree. Or was it Harris?
Judaism is different, as it's also an ethnic group, culture, and way of life. Many aspects of being Jewish are tenuously connected (and even divorced) from the original theology.
There are lots of self-identifying Jewish Atheists like me for a reason. Some even observe ritualistic aspects like kashrut, shabbat, etc. (though I'm not one of them).
I'm grateful for being raised Jewish. Granted, I grew up in a home with limited observance outside of the High Holidays, and belief in Hashem wasn't shoved down my throat. Even if I hadn't ended up connecting with the secular aspects of my Jewish identity, if your family doesn't teach you about what it means to be Jewish, the rest of the world will do the teaching for them (and rarely in a positive way).
Last edited by ElijahAstin; 09-29-2018 at 04:08 PM..
Judaism is different, as it's also an ethnic group, culture, and way of life.
That is true. As it turned out, my friend eventually married a Jewish man although it was, hmm, I think almost ten years after she converted to that faith. She moved to the West Coast after changing jobs and met him there. I was invited to the wedding but wasn't able to go because of my family situation at the time combined with the distance (I'm on the opposite coast) and the cost involved.
I don't keep the kind of company with diametrically opposing value systems. So in that sense, the social aspect is not a problem. The majority of my good friends and people I like most are nontheists or super progressive spiritual types. I don't do mix company, 'cause I don't take kindly to or tolerate bigotry and -isms.
And I live in a fairly progressive area, so being a nontheist isn't really a big deal. My husband is a fairly open atheist and has many "believing" clients and it has yet to pose an issue.
I don't keep the kind of company with diametrically opposing value systems. So in that sense, the social aspect is not a problem. The majority of my good friends and people I like most are nontheists or super progressive spiritual types. I don't do mix company, 'cause I don't take kindly to or tolerate bigotry and -isms.
And I live in a fairly progressive area, so being a nontheist isn't really a big deal. My husband is a fairly open atheist and has many "believing" clients and it has yet to pose an issue.
Yeah, we get spoiled in Northern California, religion just isn't a big deal. In the past ten years my nearest neighbors have been Mormon, Episcopalian and Unitarian. None of them ever inquired about my beliefs and I never had a reason to raise the subject. We all get along quite well.
Since leaving the Bay Area for Parts Unknown, I've encountered a grand total of one religious D-Bag. This was my landlady's maintenance man and he was one of those former raise-all-hell drunks who was now a born again and off the sauce. Once when trying to persuade him to finally do something he was supposed to have done weeks before, I appealed to his sense of Christian duty.
Him: "Oh, no, that's a trick, I'm not falling for that."
Me: "Trick? What is a trick?"
Him: "Trying to make me do something by using Jesus. That's an atheist trick"
Me: "Asking you to live up to the Christian principles you profess is a trick?"
Him: "Yeah, and I'm not falling for it"
He walked off.
I had never told him I was an atheist, he just seems to have assumed it. Or maybe my landlady told him, she knew and it didn't bother her a bit.
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