Overposting

I don't know why I've been posting so much lately.  My baseline is to think about something awhile, mulling it over in my brain, trying to iron it all out so I can articulate it as best I can.  My recently attitude has been to just unload my current thoughts.  Maybe I don't want to mull it over? Regardless, here is my brain-dump for the day.

A popular meme/thought has been going around and evolving for some time now.  I remember seeing a quote similar to this pinned up in church hallways.  Here is the current iteration:

 

If this didn't frame a false narrative there would be no problem.  It starts with the qualifier "If," which keeps it accurate, but then frames the rest of it like it is the only option for leaving the church.  99.9% of people absolutely do not leave the church over imperfect people around them.  Furthermore, no one "denies" the concept of a church being a hospital where everyone goes to (try) to heal.  Along with that, the idea of a church being a hospital also frames it as though that is the only place for individuals to receive 'treatment,' or care.  Humanists believe that can be done when you truly empathize with others.  Spending time to reach out and care for others can heal. 

If you want to claim the Gospel as the only thing that truly heals, then you have to account for the billions of people living or who have lived that lived perfectly happy lives without it, finding healing powers in their family and friends.  Change the narrative. Change how you see people who leave.  Change can come from within. I'm just a dissenting voice. Don't accept damaging ideas that are fostering and bred to alienate and damage relationships.

Interfaith parenting

Interfaith parenting is complex and not an ideal situation.  One parent almost always has the advantage and  teaching children can be hard as many religions teach they have a monopoly on truth.  If a child learns the cultural rhetoric of a specific belief system, how does it look if one parent doesn't belong to it? It's always a balancing act of the 'outsider' parent, and that is often taken for granted.  While being respectful of the belief system, the outsider parent has to be allowed to give their perspective and opinion on things, encourage critical thinking, and articulate the differences between the parents' beliefs.  This is also hard, in light of the rhetoric, when the believing spouse thinks the outsider parent is morally deficient.  One of the primary responses is to protect the children from their damaging and dangerous ideas, as it will lead to 'sin,' and even possibly lose the child's relationship, not to mention losing their soul.

Directly because of that cultural rhetoric that many belief systems foster, families are torn apart.  Let me reiterate: loving relationship are torn apart by belief systems that foster the idea that they have a monopoly on morality and truth.  Let me be clear: I love my children just as much as my wife.  I worry about them day and night.  I want them to be happy.  I have learned a thing or two in my 36 years regarding where real happiness comes from.  I know they have the potential to be happy by choosing to be a part of a belief system, but I also know they have better odds choosing to leave.  I have never been happier personally after choosing to leave.  Many people suffer significantly less guilt, shame and depression being free from a control mechanism over their lives.

This letter will be my template for my own children that choose to go on a religious mission:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/4thajp/before_you_go_follow_up_to_my_son_planning_on/

Pot-Kettle Ignorance

I had an acquaintance ask me on Facebook questions regarding my Atheism and my knowledge of the Bible, religion and Christianity.  It was a public post and another individual was involved on an OP of mine.  The conclusion he came up for me was that my decision was based on ignorance.  Now sometimes I feel like it could be an equal foundation.  Atheists point fingers at theists and say they are ignorant, why can't they do that to us?  Those instances are happening less and less.  Most of us don't just read the Bible and conclude there is no God, even though that is pretty close to a valid conclusion in and of itself.  Most atheists use a complex set of inputs to come to that conclusion.

Atheists, first of all, conclude there is no God, while gladly suspending that belief based on any forthcoming evidence.  I learned this later, after deciding I liked the idea of the softer version, Agnosticism.  Realizing a rational Atheist would gladly reconsider based on new findings, I changed my mind.  But claiming ignorance was the basis of my decision is hard to wrap my head around.  Most theists conclude personal experience as the bottom line in the differences between us.  If personal experience is the difference between our spiritual experiences, then how could a theist claim my decision is based on ignorance? 

Also, even if one side of the argument thinks the other side IS basing their decisions on ignorance, why would a person use that in an argument rather than keep it to themselves? That is the quickest way to shut down any dialogue.  If that is what he wanted to do, it worked, but he has always claimed to foster and encourage discussion between parties who hold differing opinions and worldviews.  I have noticed it to be a pattern with him, though.  He seems to enjoy thinking he has the higher intellectual ground, especially if a discussion or relationship goes south.  The other person will cut it short, so he concludes that he had the upper hand because THEY couldn't come up with good rebuttals or counter-arguments.  This shows a massive lack of introspection and a stunting of personal growth.  I am very aware of my weaknesses and I try to learn from every experience and I know I am not perfect, but honestly I still have no idea how he came up with ignorance as my defining baseline.

Working title

The anger article where I got into a discussion with my brother, I noticed a common theme: Religious people doesn't acknowledge that what I'm saying might be legitimate for my own personal experience.

Questions in general within the church: there is another common theme, although not everyone will experience the same degree of pushback: hard questions are avoided and ignored.  REALLY hard questions.  I think when leadership delineates questions into categories of 'hard' and 'not hard,' we can see what they consider hard questions if we look at official responses to what they choose to address, then label it a hard topic.

There is also the idea that the organized church "hid" things from the general population that they didn't want to address or they didn't think it was 'uplifting' or 'essential' for salvation. People get really angry over this.  I was conflicted for a long time, as I could see both sides to this.  I started reading into every topic on my own, and I used non-internet sources to do it.  They ARE out there.

When people can sit down at a computer, type a specific chain of words together in Google, click on the right site and read for 5 minutes the gist of a 'hidden' topic after years of going to church faithfully and not hearing a peep about it, their anger is justified.  Just because they hadn't heard of it before, yet the information was available doesn't mean they don't have a right to be mad.

The church frames topics and conversations and lessons in such a way as to focus on the curriculum.  At the end of the lesson, there is a spiritual takeaway.  Sometimes the spiritual lesson that we can apply to our own lives is a bit of a stretch from the story they use.  If the correlation committee can't stretch a story to extract a moral lesson, then it will be discarded, or not used.  They simply don't care about alerting us to all the questionable things that have transpired.  Of course, we view the essays published on the official website today as a reactionary response to this very issue.

It is hard to understand this dynamic, especially when you are introduced to this information and your spiritual and emotional baseline just got a boulder dropped in it and the ripples aren't going to calm down for awhile.  The last thing on your mind is, 'let's look at the natural progression of how the church has correlated lessons, and how the church tries to focus on spiritual takeaways.'

Changing gears.  I have mentioned how damaging religious rhetoric is.  It ultimately hurts family units.  The most popular feedback I get for being anti-theist is why I can't leave religion alone.  It isn't something they can grasp.  If I didn't believe that religion poisons everything, then I could leave it alone. The fact is, I want it eradicated.  It isn't only religion, it is anything the believing brain comes up with and holds on to and makes it a huge focus in their lives.  Conspiracy theories is a good example outside of religion.  Our brains want to find patterns in things, then connect it with a higher power or in a power that explains things that are out of our control. Because I can't leave it alone, I must be filled with hate.  This is the furthest thing from the truth I can imagine.  Nothing is above criticism.  If a belief system can't handle criticism, what is the point of that system, or how strong can your faith in it truly be?

Another example of how rhetoric damages relationships.  Religion teaches its adherents that non-believers have no morals.  Morals come from their higher power, so how could non-believers have morals? This is a huge fallacy that can easily be proven by looking at criminals.  Bad people will do bad things regardless of what they believe in.  Horrific things are done in the name of religion arguably moreso than under any other banner, besides maybe statism.  Statism is intrinsically religious to itself, not necessarily to a Godless system.  They have replaced God with itself.  The argument that religion has a monopoly on morals is ridiculous and baseless.