ConureDelSol

So just to be clear, you don't have family living with you that forces you to go, but you instead go out of guilt and fear of disappointing your grandparents? I'm not sure how your grandparents are, so this may be a silly suggestion but have you ever told them you just want a "break" from church? Just say something along the lines of "I need time to be alone and explore my spirituality" or something? Or would they have a coronary if you said that?

So this video popped up on Facebook from a friend who is in the same veterinary technology program as me: http://www.viralnova.com/owen-and-haatchi/ If you don't feel like clicking the link, it's about a boy with a disease that causes his muscles to be constantly tense and a dog with three legs. In the story, the boy is really introverted because he's afraid he'll be judged due to his condition. They then find out about this dog who was tied to a train track and had his leg mangled so it had to be amputated. Apparently they were having difficulty finding a home for it. So I posted in the comments that I thought it was weird that they had trouble finding a home for this dog because it was: 1. A three-legged dog. Adopters love these guys because they think they are helping a poor, poor animal that's now disabled. 2. It was an Anatolian Shepherd. On the teddy bear scale, these guys are up there with Burnese Mountain Dogs, Newfoundlands and Great Danes My friend replied that yes, it was weird, but maybe it was fate that the boy and the dog would end up together. I paused to think about that. My logical side says it was just a series of random circumstances that happened to work out in their favor. My emotional side wants to say that it was destiny. I tend to listen to my logical side unless I am super carried away. So, in the end, I just decided that stuff happened for no particular rhyme or reason and it worked out really well. So what is your position on fate? When I say "fate" I don't mean anything god-guided necessarily. If there was a secular way of defining it, that's basically what I'm asking about. Also, any stories relating to this topic are welcome.

The point is that they believe that Jesus/God is the ultimate cause. WHY he is that cause is debated between xtians, but in the end their answer for everything boils down to "God did it." Even with the Creationists who say that God created the universe through the Big Bang, they still maintain that God was the uncaused cause of the Big Bang. It seems to me that "God" tends to be synonymous with "what hasn't been explained."

If there's one thing I hated about xtianity, it was thinking that I supposedly knew all the answers without actually KNOWING them. Answer: God. How: We'll never understand because God is too crazy awesome for us to comprehend his ways. It feels dishonest to me. I much prefer the more realistic approach. Either we know the answer to something and have a way of explaining it or we don't know the answer to something, we are honest about that fact, and we are working every day to understand it. With xtianity, they have this finality. This notion of "Don't attempt to even try to understand it. You can't." That's like telling me not to push the big red button. Now that you told me not to do something, everything in me wants to do it. Why would God create us with such an innate sense of curiosity and wonder but then tell us we can't act on those very impulses that make us human? People like to think that with God, possibilities are unlimited. In reality, the taboo of "knowledge that shouldn't be known" is what holds us back. If you know the reason for everything then what is there to strive for? It is the very fact that we have this innate curiosity that we have come so far as a species. Everything, from Columbus discovering the New World to landing a rover on Mars named for the very reason it got there: Curiosity, is a result of this urge. It was people being curious about what things looked like up close that led to the inventions of microscopes and telescopes. It was these microscopes and telescopes that led to revelations in medicine, chemistry, astronomy, biology, etc. I know this isn't a new concept in any way whatsoever. I hesitate to say that religion itself is what has held us back in many cases. Many scientific causes were actually hastened by certain religious groups. I think I'd rather say that it's the idea that there is no reason to bother learning too much because of the fear that God will somehow punish us or that the efforts would be wasted. In many ways, I guess we have to thank this idea for much of humanity's progress. Why? Humans are defiant. You tell us something is impossible and we immediately work to show that it's not. To xtians, this defiance is probably ungodly. Sinful, even. To those of us who know better, it is what has made us grow as a species. In the end I am proud of all of the things that make me human that some xtians want to suppress. I am curious. I am defiant. How boring of a universe would it be if we knew everything? Time and time again, we have proven that we don't know everything and that we are capable of learning that which some say we shouldn't know. The consumption of knowledge and the concept that there is no end to the questions to be answered is one of the very reasons life is worth living to me. My brain isn't as awesome as some, so I'll probably never be able to understand concepts such as, say, quantum mechanics on a level that a physicist might. Still though, the idea that I belong to a species that has even a select few individuals who CAN understand this and may answer those questions thought unanswerable makes me proud to be human.

Is it me or does it sound like a perfect storm of contradictions for developing OCD? "We should keep trying to get sin out of our lives, even though it's not possible to make that happen. You should still keep trying though." "Dogs should keep chasing their tail. They'll never catch it, but they should keep trying" "You should keep trying to make that picture straight. It'll never be perfectly straight, but you should strive for it to be." "The kitchen will never be clean enough, but you should keep trying to make it perfectly clean." I feel like there's a huge difference between "striving for perfection" and "striving for the best that is possible."

Hey all, it's been awhile since I've posted on here because of life and all but I read something and was interested enough to hear your thoughts. There was a vlog post on the Friendly Atheist about being asked to say grace before a meal. What should an atheist (or in this case also assume, agnostic/humanist/secular jew/etc.) do? Should they politely decline? Should they go with the flow and pretend? Hemant Mehta suggested just saying what you're thankful for without mentioning God. So I thought of myself in that position (it doesn't happen because my family knows I'm an atheist, but still) and came to the decision that I thought that was kind of a lame idea. Why? Because if any of you have been in religious families, you know that shit hits the fan when someone doesn't mention God where they think God should be. So if you were asked to do a prayer and you start listing off the things your thankful for, I can see a number of situations occurring: "Yes, but WHO are you thankful to? YOU'RE THANKING GOD BECAUSE YOU KNOW HE EXISTS *insert "Atheists don't exist" rant here*" or You: "Amen..." Loud Obnoxious Family Member: "-IN JESUS' HOLY BLOOD AND HIS TRUTH AS WELL AS HIS WISDOM AND SACRIFICE SO THAT WE MAY NOT PERISH BUT LIVE ETERNALLY IN HIS UNDYING RIGHTEOUSNESS AMEEEENNNNN" Or some other such awkward situation not limited to the "Let's talk about why you hate God because you won't pray to Him" talk over or after dinner. The thing that struck me the most though was that just talking about what I'm thankful for while all the religious people at the table have their head bowed makes me feel like a fucking idiot. I feel like I'm talking to myself or to a wall. I feel like it's just not practical. I don't know, just the thought of doing that makes me embarrassed. So I'll just stick with what I've been doing for now and just politely decline. I'm interested if anyone else just feels that this solution is just overwhelmingly silly and naive? I don't want to offend anyone who thinks it's a good idea, it's just not something I could personally do.

No, I don't believe in a conscious, all-knowing god. Or any of the other ones. Were I to envision some sort of universal entity , I would say I would be somewhat similar to a pandeist. I wouldn't think that this god actually guided anything in the universe or was even aware of it.

Nope, nope, nope. The words always enrage me enough that I just can't listen to that stuff.

Love Ex-C, hate the politics.

People tend to thirst for debate. If the xtians aren't coming for us to debate, we debate about other things. Honestly, I just haven't been paying attention to the stuff BO posts.

I may have worked for the guy, but I wasn't really close to him or anything. I kind of always thought the way people practically worshiped him was creepy. I went to counseling with him once, but that was it. It's my dad whose world of falling apart right now. This was the job he was supposed to spend the rest of his life doing. Now he finds out that all the people around him that he trusted were scum and he could lose his job because of it. He was talking about getting a weekend security job. I told him he would miss church and he said "We don't exactly know what's going to happen with church right now."

So, those of you on the Facebook group may have heard that the pastor of the church I used to work for (and that my dad currently works for) was arrested with charges of having sex with two minors younger than 14. He is currently facing 7 felonies and had $200k bond in Texas. So he made bond, came back to Virginia and now I have updates that I would like to share. Another pastor of ours was arrested a week prior for basically harassing and threatening someone who was trying to get the head pastor convicted. As of today, the head pastor, the harassment pastor and two other pastors resigned from the church. When the head pastor returned home, his wife would not let him in the house and he resorted to sleeping in his office at the church (an office he shouldn't have been using since he'd already stepped down). It has now been confirmed that the members of the inner circle at the church were lining their pockets. My dad looked into the finances (after being told to only keep the past two weeks for reporting to the IRS or something) and discovered that one member who reported making $40k/year was actually making over $100k per year. When my dad signed a contract to work with them, he had a set amount he would work for as a minimum. Since then, he has had a 12% cut in pay. Where did that go? The pastor's Jaguar, an Escalade, a classic car, big screen TVs, a movie theater in his house, cars for other inner circle members, etc. We have been in debt for years because of taking my mother's parents into our home and providing for their medical needs. Yet my dad has essentially been cheated out of AT LEAST 12% of what he should have been making. AND THAT'S NOT EVEN THE WORST PART. After the head pastor was kicked out, the board went into his office and discovered videos of him having sex with just about every member of the staff. It was found out that he used these videos as blackmail against anyone who tried to oppose him. It was also discovered that he had paid the family of the two girls he molested (the charges being brought against him now from 1996) to keep quiet. So, the church is falling apart at the seams, my dad is looking for an exit strategy and everyone feels betrayed and taken advantage of. Also, my dad was completely denying any of this until a week or so ago. Evidently, he heard some things in staff meetings and has seen some things in emails and other virtual documents (he's the IT guy) that has convinced him that this is all true. So basically, my ex-pastor is a tremendous scum-bag and I now have very little doubt that he's done everything he's been accused of and more. He's facing the possibility of 20 years to life in prison right now if convicted. Let's hope the fuckwit gets what he deserves. Oh, and my dad overheard his wife saying that she and the children are moving back to California. And he was buddies with Jack Schaap. Looks like my "Something fucked up is going on here" senses I conveyed in a post here awhile back were right on target.