I'm watching Bible Secrets Revealed....you know, the one that explains what a useless pile of shit the damn thing is.

I decided to reread Forged by Bart Ehrman since watching Bible Secrets Revealed and an interesting thing happened.

I was reading it while out to breakfast with my mom and a friend we know from the coffee shop and this friend asked me what I was reading so I told her it was a book about the forgeries that are in the bible and my mom started asking me questions about it and it made me realize something:

I don't think she remembers that I'm an atheist.

You may have to wear a t-shirt or something to remind her!

(November 18, 2013 at 12:05 pm)Minimalist Wrote: You may have to wear a t-shirt or something to remind her!

This is my current favorite

I guess telling her daughter she was going to hell didn't make an impression on her. It sure made one on me.

(November 18, 2013 at 4:13 pm)Clueless Morgan Wrote: I guess telling her daughter she was going to hell didn't make an impression on her. It sure made one on me.

Welcome to the club. My father said I was hell bound and didn't hardly blink an eye. I guess he believe that his heavenly lobotomy will take care of any sadness he might feel for his son throughout eternity.

(November 18, 2013 at 10:37 pm)Cinjin Wrote: My father said I was hell bound and didn't hardly blink an eye. I guess he believe that his heavenly lobotomy will take care of any sadness he might feel for his son throughout eternity.

Cinjin, this is so sad. And Morgan, you too. Wow. Just... wow. My hat is off to you guys, and everyone else out there who has dealt with such a terrible thing just to be who they are. Hugs all around.

(November 18, 2013 at 10:37 pm)Cinjin Wrote:

(November 18, 2013 at 4:13 pm)Clueless Morgan Wrote: I guess telling her daughter she was going to hell didn't make an impression on her. It sure made one on me.

Welcome to the club. My father said I was hell bound and didn't hardly blink an eye. I guess he believe that his heavenly lobotomy will take care of any sadness he might feel for his son throughout eternity.

I had not seen this before. I'm sorry, man - I can scarcely imagine how that would have felt.

(November 18, 2013 at 10:37 pm)Cinjin Wrote: Welcome to the club. My father said I was hell bound and didn't hardly blink an eye. I guess he believe that his heavenly lobotomy will take care of any sadness he might feel for his son throughout eternity.

Parents can be douches, not realizing the damage they are causing their children, because they are incapable of seeing past themselves and the silly beliefs to which they adhere.

My relationship with my father is nonexistent. I realized years ago that it was not worth salvaging what he clearly destroyed during my childhood.

(November 18, 2013 at 11:12 pm)Zazzy Wrote:

(November 18, 2013 at 10:37 pm)Cinjin Wrote: My father said I was hell bound and didn't hardly blink an eye. I guess he believe that his heavenly lobotomy will take care of any sadness he might feel for his son throughout eternity.

Cinjin, this is so sad. And Morgan, you too. Wow. Just... wow. My hat is off to you guys, and everyone else out there who has dealt with such a terrible thing just to be who they are. Hugs all around.

Thanks, but the hugs should really go to Cinjin and those in much, much crappier situations that I'm in; my mom's reaction seemed like the knee-jerk response she had been taught as a kid, not a theologically supported statement she was making out of malice or deep abiding belief - she doesn't go to church, she's, as far as I know, never read the bible (in fact I blew her mind the other day when I answered a trivia question about the bible correctly: "How many books are there in the Old Testament?" she couldn't believe that I not only knew how many there were in the OT, but that I calculated that number by using the total number of books minus the number of books in the NT. Blew. Her. Mind.) and her religious convictions currently seem to come from whether she agrees with what a fundamentalist friend of hers spouts about bible stories. She's a major victim of childhood indoctrination, confirmation bias and a complete lack of curiosity about whether her beliefs are true or not.

I didn't take her condemnation all that seriously when she said it and the only reason it made an impression on me in the way it did was because she'd never said anything like that to me before and it completely caught me off guard. My naive 16 year old self didn't expect that answer.

Perhaps one day we'll have a discussion about it and I'll learn whether she feels the same way Cinjin's father feels. Then I might have to do some reevaluating.