Recovering from Religion

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Comment by kara on February 21, 2013 at 1:59pm

Thank you Idaho. I think I just needed to vent.

Comment by Idaho Spud on February 21, 2013 at 1:48pm

Kara, sorry to hear about your mother.

Comment by kara on February 21, 2013 at 1:42pm

That's exactly what it was and how she had previously always seen it. It was a cute family tradition that even though I'm an adult I still did because it had become part of the fabric of family xmas. What hurt was while i thought being atheist only meant not taking part in religion apparently to her it meant closely held holiday quirks where no longer open to me any more either.

Comment by Patricia on February 21, 2013 at 1:29pm

I had lousy ''parents of the year'', but the hurts never really go away. I can't get rid of the hurt/anger either, so I've had to place it in the past & try to live for today. Thankfully I have a husband, great in-laws (now deceased), friends & neighbors to help keep me reasonably sane......I think. 

After more than 7 years of dead silence, I got a surprise birthday card 3 weeks ago with an apology & request for forgiveness from ''mother''. This came after ''father'' had died a few years ago, so he's out of the picture. I wrote her a note thanking her for the apology, but I said NOTHING about forgiveness....I will not give her that.....because I wouldn't mean it anyway. We shall see what happens now, if anything, I guess. I don't love her, & I don't think I ever did......which of course does not make me a lousy person.

Sitting back here, I think your hiding the jeezuzz thing is a funny sort of kid type prank. Maybe you can see it that way too.

Comment by kara on February 21, 2013 at 9:54am

Hi all. Hope every one is well. I haven't really talked much here but I'm finding my anger and hurt are coming to the surface again. You see it's coming up for my birthday followed by mothers day and I've been estranged from my superstitious religious narcissist mother for roughly a year. It's been a tough year but there has also been healing. But there's one odd thin that keeps playing in my head, it's no where near the worst thing she ever did but it's been niggling at me for a while and I've never talked about it before. You see I used to hide baby jesus. I know weird sentence but at christmas mum would set up the little beautiful nativity scene and i would always proclaim that baby jesus wasn't born yet so he shouldn't be in the scene. I would take out little poly resin christ and hide him, different places every year. She would pretend to be annoyed and look for him and then on xmas eve I would dig him out at midnight and we would open one present. This carried on even till adulthood. Except the last time I did it, I was semi pagan with a fair dash of atheist and she knew this, she had claimed to be ok with it but when she noticed baby jesus was missing yet again she spat at me that I was being disrespectful of her faith and why did I care I was a pagan. It's strange but this has been a source of pain for me and remains so. was i foolish to think my childhood and family traditions would tolerate change?

Comment by GOD'aye on February 19, 2013 at 8:09pm

Looks like a nice place James, definitely worth checking out!

Comment by James M. Martin on February 19, 2013 at 7:38pm

Richard, I always bring up the moral inconsistencies, especially in this age of presentism, which I define as an attempt to impose 6,000-year-old ethical standards on the 21st century people.  I point to Genesis, too, and to the story of Lot in particular.  After fleeing Sodom, which, we are told, God destroyed because of its homosexuality, Lot first sees his wife turned into a pillar of salt, then impregnates his own daughters to ensure continuation of his line.  Thus, it may easily be seen, God hates queers, but he approves of father-daughter incest.  Seems to me we have enough incestuous pedophiles in our prisons today.

Comment by GOD'aye on February 19, 2013 at 7:33pm

Though that should be fairly  obvious, since Australia has had 2 atheist leaders in Gough Whitlam and now Julia Gillard.

Being an publicly known atheist doesn't lesson their chances of winning here, she is still neck-to-neck with her conservative theist opposition.

So, atheism is actually considered normal or common in Australia.

Comment by GOD'aye on February 19, 2013 at 7:25pm

Though I've read that both the UK and USA are developing a joint approach to implementing a national science and education curriculum that all government funded educational institutions must apply, similar to that which has existed in Australia for many years.

This will wipe creationist teaching out of all publicly funded schools, since it just will not be allowed in the curriculum that must be adhered to.

It's been banned in Australian publicly funded schools for many years, which is why ex teachers of creationism, such as Ken Ham had to move to the US where he could teach it.

Comment by GOD'aye on February 19, 2013 at 7:17pm

Well Richard, we were only 14 at the time and rebellious kids.

The teacher is still alive, gave up teaching for obvious reasons and last I heard was the head priest of his church.  So he hasn't done badly.

Once they are as badly indoctrinated as he was, there was no hope in making him see the light.  Ridicule was our only weapon against him.

Though, I couldn't stand being in a community of religious people, I even door knock for a couple of religion based charities and get rejected and nasty comments made at me by residents, because I am representing a religious group.

Most of the inhabitants here are atheists.  

It's the religious people in our community who are vilified.

So it's completely the opposite here.

I have to go online to taunt the religious.

If I could do it in my community, I would.

Aye M8!  :-D-

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