Atheist son confronts Catholic Mother

i think it is indeed okay, despite that woman\'s ravings.

we always change our mind...just the same we have the right to think what we want as a result of changes.

 

\"Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies. \" -Mohandas Ghandi

... not to say all Christians are like this Catholic mother... in fact, I\'ve known several steadfast believers who truely understand their faith and benefit tremendously. But to scold your son for questioning his belief, is that really what Christianity is all about? To truely understand religion, you have to open your eyes to the entire world of religious beliefs. With a broader view, it\'s easier to understand what is truely being said as opposed to taking everything literally.

There is so much more to faith than what this woman is portraying.

But that is all based on the assumption that this woman\'s screaming was unprovoked. I mean, any number of things could have happened to make her react the way she did.

 

Why does that mother look so familiar..

 

I remember that exact conversation when I was a kid... Oh what memories.

 

Ditto here geetardude. I was exactly 15 y/o and a day, casually mentioning to my mom that I\'ll just pop out for an hour or so to resign my membership in the Norwegian State Lutheran Church, as I was then legally able to do. And as such there was certainly not going to be any confirmation.

After the initial anger, tears etc, came the bribes. I\'ll never really understand it. I mean, I could have understood it if I said I\'d join some criminal gang doing some pillaging and raping and whatnot. But really now, just for not believing in some fairy tale?

Notice in the video btw how calm the father is, sipping his coffee Wonder what he\'s thinking? Probably something along the lines of \"YES! Finally it\'s not me getting all the scorn. You go boy!\"

 

\"You\'re an atheist...give me a FUCKIN\' break Michael!\" LOL!

I\'ve never really had to tell my parents that religion, as far as christianity goes, means nothing to me. The issue never really comes up...I don\'t think my mom believes either.

Now my grandparents...Every time I see them I can feel the pity in their eyes because I\'m \"unsaved\". It makes it hard to stand being around them, honestly, which is sad because they are my family. Every family gathering my grandpa corners me and starts talking to me about Jesus. It makes me so uncomfortable. It\'s hard to tell them that I don\'t really believe in their God because they are HARD-FUCKING-CORE southern baptists. It would hurt them SO much. If you believed in Hell, how would you feel if you KNEW that one of your family was going there for ETERNITY?

For my grandparents...they KNOW that I am going to hell. Which must be hard on them. Beliefs can make things so complicated.

 

Imagine the same situation with your grandparents, but with my parents and my entire family, basically. I basically have to pretend to be a christian because I can\'t put my family and especially my folks through all that pain. They\'ve done way too much for me, it\'s not even funny... this is why I don\'t get along with religion; because of what it\'s done to me. The confrontation will come eventually, but I have to put it out of my mind to get through each day.

 

Just get it over with skywalker. You will feel better afterwards. You just need to make it clear to your family that it is not out of spite or any such notion you do not believe. It is your true conviction, and that you need to inform them out of respect for them. That they need to know who you really are. That putting on a show would not be honest.

If they love you and respect you, they will accept that. If they don\'t, fuck \'em. you need to be you and nobody else. you won\'t find happiness living a double life.

 

jesus, what a bitch.

 

I\'d love to, but I owe my folks way too much. They\'ve worked their asses to the bone to give me a good education, so I owe it to them to at least let have the peace of mind that their son isn\'t going to burn in hell for eternity. They even have problems being open-minded on simple issues like homosexuality, let alone the entire religion. They\'re nice people, but extremely backward minded evangelical christians, many thanks to Oral, Benny Hinn, and folks like Haggard and his jolly men in tights.. so they\'re pretty much lost causes. It\'s a shit life I\'ll have to deal with, but I\'d be dirt poor with a bleak future right now if they weren\'t so hardworking, so it\'s a small price I\'ll have to pay. Also they exposed me to a lot of influences that led up to me being an atheist, and considering I personally know less than a handful of atheists, I may owe them in more ways than one.

I\'d feel extremely ungrateful if I did that to them, I even fear what it could do to their mental health; it\'s that serious. If I figure out a way of setting it up to considerably reduce the impact on them I\'d love to, but there\'s not much going in that direction, so for now I don\'t have much of a choice. It\'s fucked up, but other people have to deal with far worse problems, so I can\'t really complain.

 

It\'s because I have a strong behaviorist mentality; that none of us, even myself, are ultimately responsible for the way their mind develops and forms. People are highly susceptible to environmental influences and the subtlest things have effects on the way their mind evolves. It\'s purely by chance that I\'m the way I am, and I\'m grateful for it. With the kind of background my parents have and the number of coincidental experiences that have led them up to this point, I can completely understand the way they think and I honestly cannot blame them for it.

Okay, some more info should make it clearer; my mother just happens to be an evangelical minister (I\'m almost ashamed to say it), and my dad is just strict enough not to give a damn about my opinions. When I\'m older it would make sense to confront them, but I\'m only 19 and they\'re paying my tuition. That aside, they\'re not your average parents. They cannot fathom the depth of what they are doing right now, and they fail to grasp the simplest of logical concepts. Even as I child I was more logical than them on several occasions (something they\'ll never concede).

To put it simply, they think they\'re the best parents in the world, and there\'s no way I can reach behind that dense wall of myopia to get to the kind souls that are lying inside; I\'ve been trying my whole life. They\'ll never fully understand the reality of what they are doing, they\'ve been way too deluded by their upbringing, and live in their enclosed circle of highly deluded, but generally well-meaning christian friends.

Yet at the same time, they constantly tell me how much I mean to them, blah blah blah, and this conflict of actions has made it a struggle to live with them all these years. Thankfully, at the moment, we reside on different continents, and I plan to keep it that way. I\'m aiming to find myself in fields which directly and indirectly challenge religion (Transhumanism, Artificial Intelligence...) , so I\'m expecting to be part of some movements which are going to challenge the existing moral and ethical principles of our time. I expect my folks to be generally ignorant about these events, but if they do start to challenge me on that frontier I\'ll have no choice but to stand by my allegiance to the humanitarian cause.

Til then, it\'s a minor inconvenience to tell them I\'ve been going to church, I\'m reading my bible, I\'m praying for them etc.. It would make me happy to live freely, but I feel like I have more options than they do. To me they\'re slaves to something they no longer have any control over. Their minds are not theirs anymore, and I pity them for that. I\'ve been a shameful loafer my whole life compared to what they\'ve been through. I probably owe them more than I\'ll ever owe anybody in my lifetime, so after all their toil, and despite their flaws, I want them to be able to enjoy the rest of their lives in blissful delusion for as long as they don\'t come into direct conflict with any of my humanitarian plans.

 

I can understand how easy it is to seem condescending, but there\'s no way of disguising the truth in this case. I\'ve considerably dissociated myself from them, so it doesn\'t bother me much. What I sincerely hope is that time has a way of clearing up the issue once and for all, but from observing my folks and others I seriously fear that in a desperate attempt to have the final word, some of these fundamentalists are going to pull the plug on the civilation in the name of god\'s ultimate vengeance. I particularly fear this because just about five years back I was an up-and-coming christian crusader, and if I still was, that would a viable option in my mind. The main reason for this is the end-time prophecies being pumped into their minds, and the way history is playing out a lot like the descriptions in the bible, or rather like the other christian crusaders\' interpretations of those descriptions.

They\'re expecting civilization to go out with a bang in the final confrontation between \'man\' and \'god\'(substitute god for nuclear weapons), and as science moves closer to pushing their god off his throne I fear these people will get more desparate in becoming careless in their thinking. They\'re already capable of desensitizing themselves to mass murders in the middle-east, so when all they stand for becomes threatened I think we\'ll need to have some drastic counter-measures in place to secure our safety.

 

This makes me so glad to be raised in a home where I was truly given freedom of religion. I was raised in a non-religious household, by non-religious parents, but if I was interested in attending Christian activities and such, my decision was always supported by my parents. That video makes me really sick, that people bribe their children with gifts to turn back to religion. \"I don\'t believe in God.\" --End it there. That\'s all you need to hear to respect your child\'s choice, continue living with your choice, and continue living a life with a mixture of religious beliefs in your home, which from personal experience, is not difficult.

 

I think this is quite an assumption. I do agree, however, that the fundamentals of Christianity (and specifically Christianity, not just God in general because there are many \"believers\" who don\'t adopt structured beliefs) are being challenged. But this is not the first time. Catholicism was challenged by Martin Luther in 1546. Although times were different then, you will still find fundamental similarities between the complaints stated in the 95 Thesis to complaints about Christianity now.

There was chaos caused by the challenging of religious beliefs, but organized violence never occured. Instead, Christianity reformed itself and became much like it is today. I think we are on the verge of another Christian reformation and (hopefully) another age of enlightenment.