I've been looking for a pic of this guy forever! I kept thinking I had seen it on Kids In The Hall but it turns out it's from The State:
I am kinda in the middle of this sort of thing. Me and mine are partial pagans. Grandmother is a Presbyterian. Kiddo gets shuffled between the two types of holidays and so on quite a bit. For us Halloween is important, small feast, leaving the dinner out.. giving candy to those who knock so on. Kiddo understands, then gets dragged to grandmas for the "family" holiday. Been with her all week, helped feed the poor at the church. I don't encourage or discourage, he has to make these choices on his own. I just wish I didn't live in the penis of the bible belt.
Be honest about it and let them form their own opinions based on actual facts. I'm an atheist and my wife is what we call a cultural christian - she's a member of our national church, says she believes in God, but religion plays no part in her life and she doesn't attend church. I tell the kids I don't believe, she says she does and we both value them learning about science and how the world works. They haven't been christened and when it's time for confirmation, we''ll let them decide.
Yeah, all those peasants, serfs and poor people started being able to understand the mass and question it for themselves, instead of just being told what to do byt he patriarch establishment. Some of them even started READING by themselves, unsupervised!! Then they started reading stuff OTHER THAN THE BIBLE!!
Nope, I'm calling bullsh*t on that one. I'm atheist as, and "celebrate" Christmas every year. Eat, drink and be merry for sure - giving presents to your loved ones is great fun. I might grumble a little about the star or angel on the tree, but I don't feel it as a Christian celebration. Plus if any Christian thinks that the crass commercial version of Christmas we have in most Western Societies is particularly religious anyway, well... Australia still identifies predominantly as Christian as well - http://www.journeyonline.com.au/showArticle.php?articleId=3352 That said, the preponderance of nativity scenes that spring up around the place do gripe me. Pretty sure Christmas is one of those pagan traditions the early church co-opted to gain acceptance anyway. I'm in exactly the same situation, with the same solution. Although the "cultural christian" thing annoys me. Bit hard to take sudden religiosity from someone who hasn't been to Church in the 10 years I've known her.
It took me years of in person church trolling (embarrassing my parents with outrageous behavior), absenteeism (I'd hide in random places just before church and force them to pick between missing it and finding me) and general teenage resistance before my parents took the path of least resistance and surrendered. I still get the occasional joke about my atheism from them and from the extended family, but one by one they've learned exactly what line, when crossed, sets off a blistering stream of verbal abuse. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that not everyone grew up in a household full of butterflies and tolerance. I got smacked around pretty bad for my shenanigans, but it mattered enough to be worth it to me I guess. I doubt these ads would have given me much of any moral support (I've always been something of a suspicious and cantankerous asshole) but they deffo would have gotten a giggle out of me and that would have been enough to make an intolerable situation slightly more tolerable. Also, shit, getting out of church meant one hour of uninterrupted teenage boy access to the family computer. Hurrrrrr. I punched a few people in the face for mocking my vegetarianism back before I decided punching people in the face for stuff wasn't the way to go (even if it is hilarious). So, you know, don't assume vegetarians won't go nuts and punch you in the face.
When I was 6 or 7, upon my Mom trying to get me to church, I said something in a tantrum along the lines of "I DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH, IT'S A WASTE OF TIME." And so not only was I not dragged to church, my Mom didn't feel like going either. I felt bad about that once I grew up a bit, until I realized that it really showed a total lack of commitment to her "faith;" in truth, she was probably going to church out of some sense of obligation rather than belief, so it actually would've been a waste of time to take me. Meanwhile, I got to explore faith on my own, pretty much coming to realize I was a nontheist before my 18th birthday. There were a few years before then when I thought there was a higher power, because one time I prayed that my parents not find out about something that happened in school, and they didn't until 4 years later when I was graduating. But I eventually realized if it was divine intervention that my parents never found out about me setting off the emergency shower in Chemistry class, God had really shitty priorities.
When I was nine, my dog ran away. I attempted to negotiate with God for her return. I needed to negotiate with him rather than hunt for her because she was basically a giant retarded black lab who got confused trying to lick her own ass. That dog, I reasoned, was probably too dumb to find home on its own. So I traded god my candy rights and promised a few prayers. Mere moments after, my big idiot shitspewing tardmonster discovered that her home was on the other side of a fence so (Kool Aid Man style) she smashed a giant hole through it, tackled me and then attempted to drown me in slobber. I, being duly grateful for this service on the part of God, broke my vows promptly. So it was no surprise to me when, in the fullness of time, my dog was recalled to her waaaagh by those bushy tailed avatars of the doggie khan: squirrels. Round two of my negotiations with god was tense. After all he had returned my mighty beast to me, but I had kinda fucked him on the whole candy thing. I didn't have much of a choice but to hope he'd trust me again if I promised to make up for my failings by giving up twice as much. It worked! At this point I was reasonably certain god was kind of a moron, so I repeated the trick until I ended up with something like forty years of accumulated candy fasting (fucking doubling, man). I was in over my head! I needed professional advice on how to deal with all this debt! So I asked a priest about it at the next confession and he laughed and told me God didn't work that way, and that my dog came home on her own. Which in my mind meant that I had been bamboozled by god. Here I was promising all this shit and the asshole never had the courtesy to let me know that the dog was gonna come home anyway? What a dick. From that point on god was the enemy. I should probably bring up at this point that I still hadn't quite worked out the God/Santa dichotomy, so somehow it entered my head that if God was the enemy then Santa must probably also be the enemy and that I should probably catch him in the act before he did anything nefarious. Also because I really wanted whatever candy Santa had in that sack of his. I forget why I was telling this story. Probably because I liked candy. Anyway it's over now.
That's cute, and all, but considering that I live in a country that has one half of the population actively standing in support of a political party, and politics, that call for me to be stripped of basic human rights, be prevented from teaching or adopting children, be denied the right to marry who I choose (and who may, in fact, actually manage to get my marriage annulled, this fucking state...), and actively seek to do direct harm to me in innumerable ways, small and large, on a daily basis, I think your comparison is a little bit cockeyed. I grew up being told that I was going to hell for playing Dungeons and Dragons. I grew up being screamed at, humiliated in front of the entire school, for my reading material, in a place where a theist could snatch away my books, grab me by the collar, and scream "ARE YOUR PARENTS SATANISTS, BOY?!" Without receiving so much as a reprimand from the school principal. I grew up in a time and place where teachers actively encouraged students to harass non-Christian students in order to encourage them to convert. I have seen, heard about, and witnessed first hand discrimination and hostility that white Christians would find hard to believe exists. So, at this point in my life, my reservoir of sympathy for people who claim to be seriously harmed by something as innocuous and simple as a poster subjecting their majority religion to very mild mockery is well past exhausted. Quite frankly, if this little poster really offends you, try giving some serious thought to what life is like on the other side of the cross.
So the answer is to mock them like they mocked you? Not sure how well that will work out, generally one shouldn't try to become like those they are against.
Brett, it's not even POSSIBLE for them to be subjected to what I was subjected to, in modern day America. That's kind of the point. The mere idea that this poster is even vaguely on the same playing field would be utterly laughable if it wasn't so goddamned tragic that people actually believe it to be the case.
Shake, if you're implying that Brett is a one-man human centipede, then I agree but I hate you for the mental image.
Just as a fun data point - this is the response that a polite, nonthreatening, 'nice atheist' billboard gets. http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com...1/20/ah-so-this-is-what-an-atheist-looks-like There is no winning the game of 'if only you'd been more polite / submissive / understanding they wouldn't have reacted with hostility' - there is no way to express atheist sentiment in this country without it being met with active hostility. That is the nation in which we live.
I'm sorry, Quatoria, my post was flippant and thoughtless. I clearly did not take certain things into account. I certainly did not mean to diminish the real harm that militant Christians do. I care for them less than I care for thr militant atheists I was mocking. I apologize.
No hard feelings whatsoever, OZ. We've all done it, and we'll all do it again, I guarantee. Just plain ol' human nature. Honestly, it wasn't so much your post itself as it was the fact that I've heard that same complaint - or similar complaints about atheists being too 'militant' or 'hostile' - again and again, virtually every time we stand up for ourselves. I very much appreciate your apology, and being willing to do so in a public fashion gets you a lot of points in my book. So, we're cool. :)
It's not about being "hypocritical" it's about power dynamics and fighting rigid religious normativity. Would explain more but im on qla cell.
I was five years old , I live not too far from quatoria for reference, and was of course being forced to go to church. There was a movie going on, all about easter sunday things. For a five year old at the time it was a bit graphic. Still they pulled me away from the movie to a dark corner. This was a presbeterian church .. and they start asking me questions about god and jesus. I am five fucking years old ..who the hell is jesus? Their insistence that this was a great person and I should immediately take him in my heart set off my self preservation instinct. I asked why I should, they insisted he was wonderful, and I said no because I don't know him. My parents were pulled out of service to deal with this -child-. My mother was mortified. My father.. bless him, was smiling. His never condemning me for my questions let me find my own path through various religions through the years. My final answers to the questions that bug us all are personal enough that there is no point in sharing them. No one can ever reach the same answer. Yet ..If I tell anyone about this I am some horrible person who seeks to destroy the fundamentals of my neighbors or something. I just want to live, in peace ..without folk giving two shits what I do in my head.
Its sad and wrong that someone would do that, but honestly I doubt it was some militiant christian that did it. I could see many a bored teenaged boy who doesnt give a damn about religion doing something like that just for the amusement value of it.
Bludedaffy - The thumb rule I always use is be civil. Even if they aren't It is why we made all those silly societal cues and rules to begin with.
It's cheesy, but really just read a good biography of Martin Luther King. If you want someone living, John Lewis is really something. The lesson you learn is that it's completely impossible to stand up for yourself without alienating people, mind you. But you can limit the damage.
Those "You can be good without God" atheist ads have resulted in public transit systems getting huge backlashes and dropping the ads, or being so afraid of controversy that the institute new rules about what kind of ads they'll accept. Over a fucking poster that says something that mild! It's happened all over the country, so it's not like it occurs in just one city or state. I went to middle and high school in Gainesville, Florida. It's a college town, but still the south. (The northern half of Florida is part of the south. Even the accents are southern.) Because I was out about being an atheist I had shit thrown at me by other students, was called a Satanist, had one kid punch me in the face and break my glasses... all kinds of shit. And even when I was younger and religious I experienced faith-based intolerance -- I was one of a handful of Protestants at a Catholic private school, and I had a nervous breakdown at age 8 because of how the Catholic kids treated me. So yeah, I have a low opinion of teaching kids to be devoted followers at a young age. Kids are mean enough on their own; add in hatred learned from their parents and it just gets nasty.
At a young age it seems to be more about fostering that "us vs. them" mentality, with the assumption that filling in the blanks about the things Jesus actually stood for or said will come later. There's always such a huge deal made about sin and going to hell, and it takes quite a bit of effort to figure out that "hell" isn't even part of Jesus's teachings, but it makes for a nice scary boogeyman to frighten children into toeing the line.
I agree with the content of what you're saying but Jesus did mention hell with some significance. It's one of my pet peeves about people who have legitimate complaints about modern Christians when they repeat untrue canards in making those points. HOWEVER, even if Jesus didn't mention hell there is no significant body of Christian faith that holds only to His teachings and excludes the rest of the New Testament so it's a non-starter anyway. </derail>
The thing that irks me about that OP ad is mainly how it manages to oh-so-casually foster in its target audience that exercising your imagination is something you should grow out of and be embarrassed about.
Brett, do you really think that anything written in this thread, or that the poster which started it, could come anywhere close to being an equivalent of what quatoria described?
Dude, it's Brett. Thinking things are equivalent to each other that no other person ever would is kind of his thing.
That's an interesting point, although I'm not sure it really does that. I mean, if you take it as making a point about imagination (which is clearly not the intent but which I guess you could read into it), it's only really suggesting that imaginary friends are something you should grow out of... which is pretty much true, right? I don't know at what age it stops being considered healthy to talk to imaginary people but I think the cutoff is long before adulthood.
I agree it's most likely not intentional and the broader implications just weren't considered there. But i'd actually argue that even the "you should grow out of the imaginary friends thing" attitude it promotes most directly does more harm than good, as i don't think the imaginary people thing is 'not healthy' as long as one is aware it's just practicing your imagination, empathy and storytelling abilities. And views it as such. I mean, when professional writers talk in the interviews how the characters from their stories are developed in their minds to the point they're 'real people' who 'tell them' how the story should go, they don't get the "What are you, five? Grow up." in return, or get told that's nuts. Yet this is very much what's considered 'right' to tell the kids, and what this ad does. And i don't like it -- you shame them into not practicing their imagination early on, and i have to wonder if this lack of mental workout won't negatively impact what sort of stories and characters they'll be able to come up with down the road.
