When I was a teenager, I think I might have been willing to trade no Christmas presents for never having to get up early Sunday and spend an hour listening to a boring sermon.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
This little video gives power to the anti-religion preachers such as Richard Dawkins. The sad thing is he and the people he preaches to know so little about religion they are not able to discern when it's just plain insane people who use religion as a device for their insanity.
Posts: 527 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:When I was a teenager, I think I might have been willing to trade no Christmas presents for never having to get up early Sunday and spend an hour listening to a boring sermon.
What time did church start for you? See, I hear people complaining about having to get up early on Sunday and wonder, did they always have sunrise services or something? Because most churches I know have services around 11:00. Some might have 8:30 or even 8:00 am services but those churches almost always have two services, and there's a later one that follows which you can attend if you don't want to get up early.
What people mean when they say they don't want to get up early on Sunday, is not that church starts early, but that they would rather stay in bed and sleep until 10:00 or noon. I am almost 100% positive that the vast majority of kids don't have to attend church services on Sunday that start any earlier than they have to be at school on Monday-Friday.
My teenager complains about this, and it frustrates me. We have to be at church at 9:30. That's two and half hours later than the bus picks her up for school. She can sleep two hours later than normal and yet says that church starts "early". I wish I knew what happens to the space-time continum on Sundays that makes people think they need to sleep until half the day is gone.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Steev: This little video gives power to the anti-religion preachers such as Richard Dawkins. The sad thing is he and the people he preaches to know so little about religion they are not able to discern when it's just plain insane people who use religion as a device for their insanity.
So you're saying that the woman in the video is insane?
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:When I was a teenager, I think I might have been willing to trade no Christmas presents for never having to get up early Sunday and spend an hour listening to a boring sermon.
What time did church start for you? See, I hear people complaining about having to get up early on Sunday and wonder, did they always have sunrise services or something? Because most churches I know have services around 11:00. Some might have 8:30 or even 8:00 am services but those churches almost always have two services, and there's a later one that follows which you can attend if you don't want to get up early.
What people mean when they say they don't want to get up early on Sunday, is not that church starts early, but that they would rather stay in bed and sleep until 10:00 or noon. I am almost 100% positive that the vast majority of kids don't have to attend church services on Sunday that start any earlier than they have to be at school on Monday-Friday.
My teenager complains about this, and it frustrates me. We have to be at church at 9:30. That's two and half hours later than the bus picks her up for school. She can sleep two hours later than normal and yet says that church starts "early". I wish I knew what happens to the space-time continum on Sundays that makes people think they need to sleep until half the day is gone.
It's not so much the actual time. Your teenager might not wake up any later if you didn't go to church.
BUT..the life of a teenager entails 5 days of adult supervision and 2 days to themselves. With church, it becomes 6 to 1.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
I don't think the mother in that video is typical of religious parents.
In fact, I'm not sure that the mother is religious at all. She says, "We have to start going to church every week!" like it's a solution for her son's atheism. This indicates that they weren't a church-going family before this event. Additionally, the ultimatum that only believers get presents at Christmas because (implied) that's what Jesus wants is...well, it's a rather childish view of what Christmas is about.
The fact that the son would videotape this and throw it up on the web indicates larger problems than atheism. The whole family has my pity. It must be difficult being forced to live with people you don't like very much.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:BUT..the life of a teenager entails 5 days of adult supervision and 2 days to themselves. With church, it becomes 6 to 1.
You are incorrect, at least about my teenager. My teenager's life is 7 days of adult supervision. I don't consider that my job of parenting and supervising my child is over because she's a teenager. She has much more freedom than the younger children - freedom to go places with friends, freedom to engage in activities the younger children can't like going to movies without me and staying at home by herself if I have to take the younger ones somewhere but even without church she would not have 2 days "unsupervised." She's still a minor in my care and my responsibility.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
This little video gives power to the anti-religion preachers such as Richard Dawkins. The sad thing is he and the people he preaches to know so little about religion they are not able to discern when it's just plain insane people who use religion as a device for their insanity.
Have you read the books these 'anti-religion preachers' have written?
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:BUT..the life of a teenager entails 5 days of adult supervision and 2 days to themselves. With church, it becomes 6 to 1.
You are incorrect, at least about my teenager. My teenager's life is 7 days of adult supervision. I don't consider that my job of parenting and supervising my child is over because she's a teenager. She has much more freedom than the younger children - freedom to go places with friends, freedom to engage in activities the younger children can't like going to movies without me and staying at home by herself if I have to take the younger ones somewhere but even without church she would not have 2 days "unsupervised." She's still a minor in my care and my responsibility.
Belle, I didn't mean litereally unsupervised. I was trying to find the right word to use, and hit on that.
Looking through the eyes of the teenager I once was, I think I can understand: "Monday thru Friday my parents are making me wake up and go to school. On Saturday and Sunday they don't do that." So in my mind, when I was a kid, my parents were waking me up and making me go somewhere on a day in which they shouldn't have.
Not saying it's right or wrong...that's just how I thought of it at the time.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
My kids more often make it to synagogue on Saturday mornings than I do. And on Sundays, they usually have other scheduled things (Boy/Girl Scouts, library, etc.) to get up at a designated time for.
There is no inherent right to sleeping in two days a week.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
I don't think the mother in that video is typical of religious parents.
In fact, I'm not sure that the mother is religious at all. She says, "We have to start going to church every week!" like it's a solution for her son's atheism. This indicates that they weren't a church-going family before this event. Additionally, the ultimatum that only believers get presents at Christmas because (implied) that's what Jesus wants is...well, it's a rather childish view of what Christmas is about.
The fact that the son would videotape this and throw it up on the web indicates larger problems than atheism. The whole family has my pity. It must be difficult being forced to live with people you don't like very much.
I like this response. I'm sure that Scott and I have different opinions about atheism, but I like and agree with his analysis.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I agree with Scott as well. I didn't watch the whole video because the language in it was making me uncomfortable.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
I agree with Scott as well. I didn't watch the whole video because the language in it was making me uncomfortable.
FYI there isn't any offensive language beyond the first 5 seconds of the video. Plenty of unpleasant domestic vitriol though.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
That's actually what I meant. I made it beyond the first few seconds, but the screechy spectacle of crappy parenting made me not want to watch anymore.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:In fact, I'm not sure that the mother is religious at all. She says, "We have to start going to church every week!" like it's a solution for her son's atheism.
I think this is either giving a lot more credit to religious people than is warranted or else using a much more exclusive definition than it common in some contexts.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by rivka: There is no inherent right to sleeping in two days a week.
I generally agree with this, but I also share Javert's sympathy for the kid, having been one myself not too long ago.
At 24, I've yet to tell my parents that I'm an atheist. They're not incredibly religious, but they are what I'd describe as the average Christian conservative. To be honest, I'm not sure there would be much of a point in telling them. They wouldn't understand, and it would just upset them greatly. I'm sure they wouldn't disown me, but it probably would put a strain on our relationship. My dad had a mini cow when he discovered how liberal I was, so I can imagine what the atheist conversation would be like:
"What what WHAT?! No more Christmas presents for you young man!!"
Seriously though, they've got enough stresses raising my teenage sister without that added burden.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:I think this is either giving a lot more credit to religious people than is warranted or else using a much more exclusive definition than it common in some contexts.
posted
Coming out as an atheist was much easier than coming out as a bisexual. Maybe I was just lucky.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
This is what makes me despise most of religious practices. Because people feel like they can force others into believing what they believe, through force or any other method.
Religion is fine with me, politics is not, force is not, that kind of hatred is not.
Why I don't particularly love established churches.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I know exactly what my family would do, because my brother made the same non-announcement.
My dad would say, "Well, fine." It is possible he'd roll his eyes. My grandmother would call to talk to me, but would stop talking if I said "I'm making my own decisions, Grandma."
And that would be it.
I know this because my family has actually concluded at least a couple of times that I have stopped going to church and was probably sleeping with my boyfriend, and that was their response. I have to say, that perception was incredibly frustrating to me. I do enough things in my life I'm not proud of - I don't want to be tagged with more than I deserve.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Why I don't particularly love established churches.
I hope that most atheists will realize that this woman doesn't represent any religion at all.
I don't think that is true. Most people in America tend to believe that certain behavior is indicative of the religion to which someone subscribes, especially if that person is vehement in their claim to have the religion. It happens all the time with Islam nowdays.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:I hope that most atheists will realize that this woman doesn't represent any religion at all.
Why would you say that she doesn't represent any religion? How are you able to judge that from the information we have?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Does she say what church, specifically, they will start going to in an effort to fix that? What is the religion to which this mother subscribes?
It is fine to inveigh against organized religion, but what organized religion is the villian here?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by katharina: Does she say what church, specifically, they will start going to in an effort to fix that? What is the religion to which this mother subscribes?
It is fine to inveigh against organized religion, but what organized religion is the villian here?
It doesn't say, but she does invoke the name of Jesus, so I would assume some form of Christianity.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I understand she is not a representative per say, but nonetheless a lot of children undoubtedly are going to have to practice something they do not believe or go through this, and this is common to all religions.
Islam is particularly vehement about this, and I determined this personally before all of the how to do in the middle east, and this is because their religious practices maintain that you cannot leave the Moslem faith.
Other religions are just as vehement, and I am merely responding as per the previous comment.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I am going to have to disagree that this woman does not represent religion. edit: This sentence sounds misleading, what I mean is she does represent Christianity insofar as she is a professed Christians and I think honestly believes she is.
But firstly,
I do not think the video is legitimate, what are the chances they (whoever that is) turned on the video camera JUST before the exchanged took place? What the son said, "I'm an atheist" and the sibling thought, "oh man! This will be good" <positions camera and hits record> In addition why does the video cut out at THAT point?
But assuming the video is legitimate. The womans response was a very common way to respond to such news. She did not take a moment to think about what she wanted to say, she spoke on her toes. She appealed to the strangeness of her Christian boy suddenly becoming an atheist. She appealed to materialism, "No more Christmas presents!" and she responded with a punishment that was not well thought out, "We are going to church once a week!" obviously hoping her son would see the error of his ways. Sounds much akin to sending a child into time out.
The woman IMO certainly does not represent a religion in that her actions and mindset were certainly not the ones Christianity espouses. But she does represent the behaviors that many self described Christians display.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by katharina: Does she say what church, specifically, they will start going to in an effort to fix that? What is the religion to which this mother subscribes?
She is most likely Catholic, judging from the references she made.
quote:It is fine to inveigh against organized religion, but what organized religion is the villian here?
It is not the institution that is feared, it is the perceived mob that makes up the institution. Whether that is fair or not, it is what I believe is behind most statements regarding "organized religion" in most cases.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I thought on the site it mentioned Catholic...
one sec...
yes, it says Catholic.
And I understand and agree not all persons of that faith react that way.
Some of my (seriously) best friends are (sorry, sorry, sorry,) Catholic...
I live in a very religious little town, with a large percentage of the population being Catholic, Baptist, or LDS. That is why some of my best friends are in all these faiths, even though I adhere to none of them.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
This is a sincere question. I minimize the amount of time I spend listening to unpleasant people, so what did she say that led you to conclude Catholic?
What do you mean by mob?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think its the belief that in large groups, i.e. organizations of any large scale, a groupthought can take over, and the ideals of that group can outweigh the common good of an individual outside that group.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:I think its the belief that in large groups, i.e. organizations of any large scale, a groupthought can take over, and the ideals of that group can outweigh the common good of an individual outside that group.
Am I correct in intrepreting this to mean you are opposed to organizations in general and not just religious ones?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
No, I am saying that that is what people associate with a mob.
When extreme beliefs come into play, I think the groups actions become more aggressive, which IS what I disagree with,
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Most people in America tend to believe that certain behavior is indicative of the religion to which someone subscribes, especially if that person is vehement in their claim to have the religion. It happens all the time with Islam nowdays.
Do you believe that one believer's actions speak for everyone in that religion?
I do not.
quote:Why would you say that she doesn't represent any religion? How are you able to judge that from the information we have?
The woman says a few things that lead me to believe she is Catholic. I know a lot of Catholics, having lived in Italy for two years; I also know a lot of Catholics where I live now.
None of them would respond the way this woman did. Like I said, and that you apparently disagreed with, I do not think this woman's reaction is typical.
Further, I don't think she represents a religion because she implies that Church attendance has not been a regular part of their lives. One can (tentatively) be said to represent a faith when their commitment to that faith has been quantitatively demonstrated. By her own admission in regards to church attendance, she finds herself lacking.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by katharina: What references?
This is a sincere question. I minimize the amount of time I spend listening to unpleasant people, so what did she say that led you to conclude Catholic?
She mentioned a Confirmation (ceremony) and brought up a conversation with a bishop. I think there may have been another reference mentioned, but I got the distinct impression of them using Catholic references. It doesn't make a difference in the long run what sect she belongs to, but the verbiage she used gave some clear indications.
quote:What do you mean by mob?
Because while the part that turns people off to the organizational aspect may hinge on what they feel is manipulation, the part that those and many areligious people actually fear is the large groups who are assumed to being manipulated. It is not always a very focused feeling, because it typically starts with a trust in the upper levels of the organization and finds foundation in fear of the organization as a whole.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
I think that most religious beliefs are very extreme, and that these groups religions undertake actions that individuals would normally consider wrong, (Crusades?) yet they undertake because the rest of their "group" thinks it needs to be done. Like the non-Mormon community in my town that has an almost hatred of the Mormon community.
I think extreme is the will to remove another's rights because of your beliefs that they do not share.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I sorta think she didn't act so much like "a christian" so much as she acted like a "Freaked out and worried Mom."
I don't endorse her screaming and materialistic threats of course, but she seemed like a woman who was put in a situation she didn't expect from her child and didn't know what to do.
As far as the christian point of view goes, I have to imagine the idea that her child won't be joining her in heaven has to be devastating.
posted
But I think the child would be just as worried that their family is ensconced in a lunacy (as religion often appears to outsiders) that THEY cannot escape.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:By her own admission in regards to church attendance, she finds herself lacking.
A large percentage of Catholics don't go to Church every week. I don't think it is accurate to say that they aren't really Catholics or that they don't represent the way many Catholics are.
---
And if you want to trade experiences, I grew up Catholic in a Catholic neighborhood, went to Catholic school for 12 years, and had friends declare that they were atheists/no longer Catholic to their parents and had their parents give similar, although less extreme, reactions.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Most people in America tend to believe that certain behavior is indicative of the religion to which someone subscribes, especially if that person is vehement in their claim to have the religion. It happens all the time with Islam nowdays.
Do you believe that one believer's actions speak for everyone in that religion?
I do not.
I do not either. What I do believe is that such a view does not spring whole from nothing. If enough purple polka dotted people punched you in the arm every time you met one, wouldn't you eventually begin to shield your arm when you saw a purple polka dotted person approaching?
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
Quantitatively, those are my reasons for not thinking she represents her religion. Qualitatively, her behavior is such that I don't think she represents her religion.
You disagree. I'm cool with that.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
