RE: Oh boy ...
September 21, 2010 at 12:55 pm
(This post was last modified: September 21, 2010 at 12:56 pm by everythingafter.)
(September 20, 2010 at 6:46 pm)DiRNiS Wrote: I feel for you dude, but that's a very good response. Respectable, polite and I do not think it is too cutting at all. Your family has to understand that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and opinions. In their mind they may be thinking that you will be going to burn for eternity in hell if you don't believe and you will not be joining them in heaven.
You are right in saying that you cannot pretend to believe as you would just be living a lie. We should be able to keep our own personal beliefs and opinions and have nobody else trying to ram down their different beliefs down our throats. It sucks that the relationship with your parents has to suffer because of religious beliefs. Your response is good and will hopefully help them understand your point of view. However, in the mind of the deeply religious, anything that contradicts their fairy tale view of the world is often something they will not accept.
Good luck.
One of my future prospects is to move to a place where religion has the least amount of relevance in society.
Any ideas?
Thanks, DiRNiS. At this point, I can't quite make up my mind whether to send it or not. Her e-mail didn't necessarily invite or request a reply, but I feel like I've gotta take a stand at some point because it's driving me crazy. And she's such a nice person in every other area of her life (much better than the god she believes in). I don't want to hurt her even more. Thus, maybe a non-response might be better. I don't know.
As for your question: Outside of America (assuming you live here), I would pick Switzerland or Germany. Inside America, good luck. lol. Boston and Seattle are fairly secular, or at least compared to the medieval land here called the Bible belt. As for somewhere where it's (almost) completely removed from daily life, perhaps Japan or China. At least those countries don't seem to have the same type of religious fervor as the West.
(September 20, 2010 at 8:28 pm)AtheistPhil Wrote: Maybe you should tell them that you still love them even though you've got different beliefs, or something like that. That'd make the response less cutting imho.
Yes, I was planning to add something along those lines at the end if I decide to send it.
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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