(October 27, 2019 at 2:50 pm)LastPoet Wrote: WRONG!
I have to say that simply being free to deal in reality is feeling really good to me at the moment.
Just got back from visiting my two still-living older brothers over the weekend. One is still a devout fundagelical. His small mental repertoire is sad to see, given that he is intellectually quite capable (he is a retired engineer and once directed a large multinational corporation's artificial intelligence projects). "A mind is a terrible thing to waste".
He knows I no longer believe and has mostly left it alone. He could not resist the impulse to try to proselytize my wife this morning on the way to the airport, though. Later, on the plane, she looked at me incredulously and asked, "Does he REALLY, actually believe he's going to heaven? For real?" (She has never been a believer). I said "yes ... really". She simply cannot believe he's that naive and deluded. Sadly, he is. Sadly, I once was.
It's sort of like Conan the Barbarian in reverse. It is not seeing myself driven, as I once was, before the vicissitudes of life, beaten down and defeated, and not hearing the lamentation of my woman. I am very proud of my woman in fact. She metaphorically patted my brother affectionately on the head and said that he made a lot of sense. Even though he didn't. She could care less what he thinks about her or believes for himself.
I did shut him up though with a brief summary of all the things the evangelical world I grew up in claimed to believe, and has done a 180 degree turn on since the 1980s. Not being involved in politics, or seeking worldly power for its own sake, not liking pussy grabbers and rapists and corrupt liars for example. He knows that is true -- that their vaunted morality is for sale for the right price (generally SCOTUS and federal judges of their liking). He is going to have to lay awake for a few nights thinking on THAT one.
