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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (65888)	11/26/2004 9:32:37 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 71178

<There is an assumption of moral inadequacy by some towards non-believers that can hurt children in many ways, large and small.> My atheist mother [president of Rationalist Association here], [long deceased], recounted the story to me of when she was out taking some incapacitated old person for a walk [in their wheelchair]. They met a woman who chatted a while and then took her leave saying, "Well, I must get on with my good Christian works" and my mother replied, "And I must get on with my good atheist works". The woman, astonished, said surely my mother wasn't an atheist. My mother explained "Oh yes. We atheists have to be so much more moral than you Christians because we don't get foregiveness and have only this life in which to be good". It must be so cool to swing by confession after a blow-out, get a dose of absolution and head out to the next week, fully rejuvenated with a clean slate. Then, after a life-time of sinning and foregiveness, ending up being waved through the pearly gates. We atheists do it tough. We have to be good in the here and now and make this world better. There's no paradise somewhere else to escape to, complete with 70 virgins, joy and eternal bliss. Mqurice

To: Rambi who wrote (65888)	11/26/2004 10:11:48 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

<A choir director at one of my schools told me a couple of weeks ago, that a girl announced she didn't believe in the religious pieces we are singing, and the kids really attacked her until she started crying and ran out.> It's not just in religion though. Try going against any prevailing conventional wisdom and the personal abuse is usually an instant behind, or even in front of, any rational argument of the mob. She will have learned what a pack of ignorant bullying fools the religious cranks are, not that they are right [to put the personal abuse in front of my arguments]. Recounting a story from high school days, I liked science and one day, the Principal was visiting our class and asked which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? After a brief silence, the collective opinion was that they are the same. I ventured to say that that isn't the case and was trying to explain, but not being completely clear on the reason, wasn't robust in my argument. I did know that if weighed in air, a low density thing would appear to be lighter than a dense thing because of buoyancy effects [like weighing a balloon filled with hydrogen would give a negative weight whereas it does of course have some weight]. Meanwhile, the mob was shouting me down as a klutz who had fallen for the idea that feathers were lighter than lead. Anyway, the Principal said he'd leave us with it, not even bothering to say who was right and who was wrong. As I recall, he hadn't said whether the two were weighed in air or not, in which case we couldn't answer the question. My lesson was the uselessness of most people's ability to think and listen and reason, and their desire to be in a bullying mob. Which was a good lesson. It confirmed, yet again that I do best outside the mobs. Mqurice

To: Rambi who wrote (65888)	11/27/2004 8:16:04 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Rambi and Mq, I've read through both of your comments on religion, inclusion, exclusion, etc... It would be nice to say that I've had experiences similar to Mq's. However, I've had a lot more of along the lines of the one which Rambi described happening at the performance. I was raised in a household which wasn't very religious, but in which my mom's mother had a very strong influence. She was a very kind person (to a fault), and quite religious, but in a casual way -- I don't think she went to church very often, but she prayed and read from her bible a lot -- no doubt, in part, because she had had 4 sons in the navy in WWII and did a lot of worrying. My mom recalls how her mother used to spend many nights pacing back and forth across the floors of their house, going from window to window looking off into the darkness during the entire span of the war years. In our house, religion was more a way of living, so I hesitate to even think of it as religion. It was something more akin to ethics. We've talked about the Thumper's Mother philosophy... "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." I was taught the following phrase before I had any real concept of what it meant: "There but by the grace of god go I." My family were very much followers of the "just turn the other cheek" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" way of thinking. I think the fairly constant reinforcement of these ideas caused us to be quite caring of others, but in many ways, I don't think it prepared us for the reality of the outside world. I know that I suffered many hurts along the road to growing up, and it was probably due to my belief that all people would naturally treat each other with fairness and equality. However, in the real world, such was often not the case. Some of those experiences were due to having a different religion to others -- a couple of times when I was growing up, we moved into neigbourhoods which had high populations of catholics (it seems that traditional neighbourhoods were often like that in those days - perhaps arrayed around respective churches). In one case, my Dad took a job in another city and when we moved in, the kids on the street found out I was protestant (not that I was much of one), and they continuously told me I was going to burn in hell and they played games with their rosaries and so on. This was all very strange to me. In my teens, living in Montreal, it was actually dangerous to try to cut through the corner of the catholic schoolyard on the way to the public school beyond because you would be pelted with rocks. But i learned that protestants were not much different when my German friend's very religious mother wouldn't let our Indian friend step on their property, so he had to sit on the curb down the street and wait for his friend to come out to play. Such events (and many others) disturbed me greatly and obviously made such an impression that I remember most of them to this day. But I digress.. I meant to get to this part about how children, when faced with exclusionary behaviour, may retreat into their own world and become reluctant to engage after awhile. In my own family, if we came home feeling hurt hurt, angry or upset (or hit on the head by a stone pelted by someone), my mother or grandmother would invariably sing us a particular song which was, no doubt, intended to make our hurts seem much less than the child described in the lyrics. It was a sentimental song called "Stay in your own backyard" about a black child who is ostracized by white children and comes home to his mother to be rocked and sung to then told to play in his own backyard. (yep, pretty bizarre, eh?) I just took a quick look online for the lyrics and found this page which made me laugh because the writer must have been raised by a grandmother almost the same as my own. The funny part is that the woman describes my own reaction to the world even now. If I find that people, politics or scenes of environmental degradation are getting me down, I turn away from the rest of the world and spend a few days hiking in places where I know I'll be unlikely to see or talk to another person -- or just stay around my own farm and avoid talking to others. Anyhow, here's the link for anyone who is interested. e-scribblers.com So, I don't quite know what to say about exclusion, except to say that I've experienced it in many ways, either first hand, or second hand, due to differences that I or my friends have had in relgion, race, gender, or even on the basis of whether one had a Barbie doll or was wearing the right make of running shoes. I expect my own intolerance of exclusionary behaviour is one of the reasons why I don't bother to participate much in society even to this day -- so perhaps I'm a little "exclusionary" too. (o: croc

To: Rambi who wrote (65888)	11/27/2004 8:53:41 PM
From: CharleyMike	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

<I have great respect for people of faith. And for those who live without it. > And that's one or many reasons I continue to return to this thread. Tolerance is a great indicator of intelligence, among other things, and I really like to read what intelligent folks write, think, and believe (or not!) Thank y'all.

To: Rambi who wrote (65888)	11/30/2004 1:23:17 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

You might enjoy this, a fictional discussion between C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud on the subject: pbs.org

To: Rambi who wrote (65888)	12/1/2004 12:27:40 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

When you say you "lost your faith" do you mean that you quit believing in God, or that you quit believing in the system of Christianity you were raised in? Because I can't really comprehend not believing in God, although I certainly can comprehend not understanding God, because I don't understand God at all. The concept seems quite absurd, and yet, no more absurd than the fact that I exist at all. I firmly believe in God. But the various organized versions of Christianity seem quite contrary to anything Christ was talking about in the Bible, while the Old Testament is, by and large, silly, what with giants, and begatings, and smitings, and concubines, and all the rules and regulations about what you can eat and what you can wear and so forth. I like Thomas Jefferson's Bible, where he went through and excerpted all the things that Christ said, and put them together, and left out most of the rest.