Pentecostal Parents

[Mister Agenda]

You have the patience of a saint.

But, what are you going to do with a 78 yo? Not much.

About the only emails I get from my mid-80s dad have to do with how Obama is really from Kenya and a closet Muslim. Or how we've got to seal up the borders to keep out the Mexican hordes! That sort of thing. Occasionally, I'll get something about the evil atheist/liberal/NWO conspiracy against the US, Christians and ALL THAT IS GOOD WITH AMERICA, but those are rare.

I can probably let that sort of thing slide more than religious bullshit. I'd have trouble keeping quiet when presenting with such nonsense.

I feel your pain.

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Christians aren't the only who make such claims.
I feel sorry for Panin

Yeah, hours a day for fifty years, and for what? A terribly flawed 'proof' of the Bible's authenticity.

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While researching this, I found it's also popularly claimed that Panin won the Nobel Prize for Mathematics in 1943, but it seems no prize was awarded that year--that was the only part of the tale I didn't hear from my father.

Just nit-picking, but there is no Nobel prize for mathematics.

I don't mind...that certainly explains why there wasn't one.

[DramaQueen]

My college mate is the biggest fundie (I'm a very lucky person). He was debating with another mate about how Muslims should hate the infidel (it began about how photography is haram and I knew it was going to go that way from the beginning). The liberal asked if we should hate great people like Newton (we were waiting for the physics lecturer).
He said we should hate him cause he was a jew, I told him he was a non-trinitarian Christian and he rejected it because an imam told him otherwise. Seriously.

[ShaMan]

Seriously.

Cool story bro... Tell it again

[Anomalocaris]

Quoting the Bible or making claims such as Darwin calling out for Jesus on his death bed.

That kind of claim always make me laugh. Not only is it unsubstantiated, not only is it chosen to be difficult to substantiate since most families like to keep the circumstances of the death of a loved one private, but even if it was true, so what? Are we to take the word of the mind after it is clouded by long sickness and imminence of total organ failure over the word of the same mind when it was lucid and free from physical distress?

[Mister Agenda]

My college mate is the biggest fundie (I'm a very lucky person). He was debating with another mate about how Muslims should hate the infidel (it began about how photography is haram and I knew it was going to go that way from the beginning). The liberal asked if we should hate great people like Newton (we were waiting for the physics lecturer).
He said we should hate him cause he was a jew, I told him he was a non-trinitarian Christian and he rejected it because an imam told him otherwise. Seriously.

Sigh. My Android is full of photos of Muslims. All the Muslim kids I know are masters of the 'selfie'.

[Endo]

Quoting the Bible or making claims such as Darwin calling out for Jesus on his death bed.

That kind of claim always make me laugh. Not only is it unsubstantiated, not only is it chosen to be difficult to substantiate since most families like to keep the circumstances of the death of a loved one private, but even if it was true, so what? Are we to take the word of the mind after it is clouded by long sickness and imminence of total organ failure over the word of the same mind when it was lucid and free from physical distress?

Thought Darwin was always Christian. Silly Christians, spinning everything.

[Minimalist]

Quoting the Bible or making claims such as Darwin calling out for Jesus on his death bed.

A failing of these dickheads which was noted by Robert Ingersoll over a century ago.

Orthodox Christians have the habit of claiming all great men, all men who have held important positions, men of reputation, men of wealth. As soon as the funeral is over clergymen begin to relate imaginary conversations with the deceased, and in a very little while the great man is changed to a Christian -- possibly to a saint.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll,

Lying for their fucking god seems to be their best tool.

[strawdawg]

His parents were only trying to help him. I'm sure they meant no harm.

[Minimalist]

They should mind their own fucking business.

[drfuzzy]

Just got back from visiting family in Rantoul, IL. My father and step-mother are United Pentecostals. They know I'm an atheist, so my visits are mostly me humoring them while they tell me story after story of miracles and so forth.

And just as data is not the plural of anecdote, evidence isn't the plural of stories. To me, piling up all those stories makes them less credible, not more. One story that can be verified is worth a thousand that are merely hearsay.

The United Pentecostal Church thrives on vivid story-telling, but I don't think it would last long if it had to survive on fact-checking.

One of the claims I was subjected to was Ivan Panin's Bible Code work: A brilliant Russian mathematician who went to Harvard and lectured there and was an atheist who set out to disprove the Bible spent 50 years analyzing the numerical values of the Hebrew and Greek the oldest copies of the Old and New testament, and found patterns that were mathematically impossilbe unless a single guiding intellect composed the whole thing (except the Catholic parts). His work (43,000 pages) was left to the Nobel Prize committee, and there's a $50,000 prize for anyone who can refute it.

Filtered through my dad's mind, he originally claimed Panin wrote 43,000 papers, which I observed ought to land him in the record books. While researching this, I found it's also popularly claimed that Panin won the Nobel Prize for Mathematics in 1943, but it seems no prize was awarded that year--that was the only part of the tale I didn't hear from my father.

The source of my dad's story was a sermon from a revival, which he had on tape, and which I endured. Of course it's impossible to refute 50 years of work without spending many years critiquing it, but I quilckly found on my Android that Panin wasn't even a math major, let alone a mathematician. He got a BA from Harvard, and what he lectured on was Russian Literature. He did have a Bible Code obsession and spent 50 years on it. In describing his method, he reveals that he cherry-picked from numerous manuscripts to construct a version of the Bible that fit his thesis, and seems to have been entirely unconscious of the fact that proceeding in that way invalidates all his hard work. And even so, there are mistakes in his work. There doesn't seem to be any prize for refuting it that I can find (a shame, I could sure use the money), and the whole thing is sheer crankery. Panin did leave his work to the Nobel Prize Committee, but I suppose I could do the same, it doesn't mean there's anything special about it.

I also got to hear about rock and roll back masking with devil messages. I confess, I didn't let the bit about the Second Law of Thermodynamics disproving evolution slide by, but other than that, I took it to avoid pointless arguing. My dad is 78, and I don't want to get on bad terms with him when he's nearing the end of his life.

So I'm doing my venting here. Thanks for bearing with.

Greetings, brother from another mother.  My parents started out Southern Baptist and then went Pentecostal.  Yes, saved and sanctified, glory hallelujah, rolling in the aisles and speaking in tongues Pentecostal.  My mother loved the painting of the Rapture behind the altar - Jeebus and his flock flying above crowds of people dying in rivers of lava - that she took pictures of it and made it into a poster.  There was one hung in each bedroom.
I hear ya.  I feel your pain.   I celebrate our freedom!!!
It's a cult.