(January 27, 2015 at 8:40 pm)jackriot100 Wrote: so i am looking for a bit of advice from any atheist willing to help. i am 15 and i have really moronic parents who are christian. they think the country was founded on Christianity. they say things like "evolution is just a theory" and considering i aspire to be an evolutionary biologist this irritates me. i do not know what to do about it. i would say do nothing but i feel like i am lying to my parents by not informing them of my lack of belief. they refuse to listen to reason about all subjects involving religion. and example of this was when we talked about how most of the founding fathers were deistic not christian, which was a point i brought up about when trying to explain how we are a secular country founded by secular philosophies. i simply ask for advice coming from any helpful atheist. i do not mean to sound childish but considering circumstances i felt the need to put my trust in a forum of people who are hopefully not as stupid.
The best way to work with such people is to find points of agreement,
then show you can agree with the positive values and principles but from a secular perspective that doesn't contradict theirs.
for example
1. with this Christian business about govt founding
you can AGREE that what is Christian are traditions like
a. joining in prayer and invoking God's guidance before writing the laws
that is a practice consistent with Christianity and it does coincide with
beliefs that the founders were divinely inspired and these laws came from God
b. the concept of adopting responsibility for enforcing laws directly by conscience
the founding fathers believed in enforcing natural laws themselves where the people and the govt are supposed to be one
so this is consistent with the Christian concept of the people as the church body embodying and enforcing the laws by conscience
secular gentiles do the same thing when we embody natural laws of govt ourselves
2. you can explain you are more like Thomas Jefferson who understood in terms of natural laws.
natural laws come from God of Nature, so these are still under the same authority of Jesus that Christians invoke with scriptural laws
so if you can translate what you believe in such as laws coming from nature
and this is the secular equivalent of believing in divine laws coming from God,
then the same spirit of Christ Jesus as Universal Justice for all humanity
fulfills the natural laws of the secular gentiles equally as scriptural laws for the church
and just explain to them you are of the secular fold of gentiles
that Jesus governs also. and that's why you relate to natural laws
the way they relate to scriptural laws. because God made you a secular gentile.
