(September 10, 2014 at 11:51 am)badlydrawngirl Wrote: I love my family dearly and they are great people, but I know they wouldn't accept my beliefs and would probably give me the cold shoulder for awhile and tell me they feel sorry for me, and they'll pray for me, and "how can you look at your son and say that there is no god?" Most of all really, I'm afraid to tell my dad, because he's wonderful and he means everything to me and I don't want to hurt him or make him disappointed in me.This is just another reminder of how religious belief hurts people. They sincerely believe that treating you like that is for your own good, and they are willing to suffer (and make you suffer) because they believe it is the best way to deal with your lack of belief. They think that god would prefer for you all to suffer, with the promise of a happy future if they just stick to their guns in this life.
I'm sorry to hear that you're facing this scenario, and there doesn't seem to be a way out if they are determined to demand certain concessions from you regardless of the consequences. I can only say that you will probably be better off if you stand your ground, knowing that there is no good resolution to this, just bad and less bad. Hang in there and remember that it's not your fault if they prefer to side with an imaginary friend over their very real daughter and sister.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
