Elcon, I am sorry you have to deal with this. It sounds like a really tough situation, and I know it is emotionally taxing.
I know what it's like with the passive aggressive (or even aggressive) religious parent. I have one, and she drops little religio-nuggets in front of me all the time. I try my hardest not to take the bait, not to respond, not to shove it back in her face. My mother may not care so much, but my relationship with her and my father is more important to me than proving them wrong or even trying to get them to understand fully. My dad does a lot better with it. But I love them, and I'd do anything for them, even if that means not telling them how I really think/feel. That's for me, anyways. If I did that it would be for me to feel better about things. But I don't owe them my mind. My mind is my own, not owned by anyone. I make boundaries with my parents, and every now and again I have to enforce those boundaries by being assertive or staunchly logical, but I don't get aggressive.
I agree with almost everything you said. Challenge the terrible assertions. Stick up for yourself when you are being disrespected. But don't stoop. Calling your father a coward, even if true, doesn't help anything. I win EVERY time with my mom by taking the high road. I gain personal integrity and respect from her by being steadfast in being as good a person as I can be, being as compassionate and helpful as I can be. She sees this and has to cope with the cognitive dissonance from what her preconceived notions of what an atheist is and what I AM. I can't change my mom's mind and force her to respect me. She can though, and the only thing I can do to influence that is to be me.
It has taken time, but I have a fantastic relationship with her. I call her every Sunday, and her and my father are excellent sources of love and support for me. If I wanted to challenge every time they said something religious or stupid, I could ruin it all in the name of hubris, but it's way more important to me to maintain.
All this being said, your dad went out of his way to challenge and insult you here, and he deserved to be set in place. I would, in the future, set him in his place from a place of less emotion. With cold, hard rationality, you win every time.
I know what it's like with the passive aggressive (or even aggressive) religious parent. I have one, and she drops little religio-nuggets in front of me all the time. I try my hardest not to take the bait, not to respond, not to shove it back in her face. My mother may not care so much, but my relationship with her and my father is more important to me than proving them wrong or even trying to get them to understand fully. My dad does a lot better with it. But I love them, and I'd do anything for them, even if that means not telling them how I really think/feel. That's for me, anyways. If I did that it would be for me to feel better about things. But I don't owe them my mind. My mind is my own, not owned by anyone. I make boundaries with my parents, and every now and again I have to enforce those boundaries by being assertive or staunchly logical, but I don't get aggressive.
I agree with almost everything you said. Challenge the terrible assertions. Stick up for yourself when you are being disrespected. But don't stoop. Calling your father a coward, even if true, doesn't help anything. I win EVERY time with my mom by taking the high road. I gain personal integrity and respect from her by being steadfast in being as good a person as I can be, being as compassionate and helpful as I can be. She sees this and has to cope with the cognitive dissonance from what her preconceived notions of what an atheist is and what I AM. I can't change my mom's mind and force her to respect me. She can though, and the only thing I can do to influence that is to be me.
It has taken time, but I have a fantastic relationship with her. I call her every Sunday, and her and my father are excellent sources of love and support for me. If I wanted to challenge every time they said something religious or stupid, I could ruin it all in the name of hubris, but it's way more important to me to maintain.
All this being said, your dad went out of his way to challenge and insult you here, and he deserved to be set in place. I would, in the future, set him in his place from a place of less emotion. With cold, hard rationality, you win every time.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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