(January 31, 2014 at 11:09 am)ThePinsir Wrote: My mom was pretty sad when I told her. She thinks I'm going to hell. But she hasn't tried to force anything on me and hasn't gotten angry, so I'm damn lucky.
I've said before that I think my mom has forgotten that I'm an atheist but when I told her (years and years ago) her reaction was to tell me I was going to go to hell.
My current tactic to deal with threatening me with hell, should it ever come up again, is to say that threatening me with hell is as meaningless as threatening to send me to Mordor. It might an awful place that I'd never want to go to... but there's no reason to think that it's real. Likewise, asking me if I want to go to heaven is like asking me if I want to go to Neverland; sure it might be fun (actually, I think Neverland would be way more fun than Heaven) but there's no reason to think it's real.
As for the rest of my family, religion is almost never discussed* so me being an atheist has neither come up, nor been a big deal.
*My mom's favorite "poor, pity me" phrase is "God only gives you what you can handle, which is why I had such well-behaved kids" which really saddens me that she doesn't have a higher opinion of herself. The very occasional (once-a-year) phrase like this is about the extent of how much religion is discussed in my family.
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
