Weather or not it's worth it is up to you,  I have relatives, some are worth it some I just don' t talk to. Most of them don't bring up the religious stuff when I'm around; surprisingly enough they all claim to feel more relaxed at my house,  no agendas here.       When ever your mother says something irrational you might respond by sharply pointing out "How can someone with a math degree think like that?"    It may not convert her but she will likely stop talking nonsense when your around, things will get easier for you that way.

    This worked with my mother,  she had a medical degree and was an ICU specialist.  Rational reality  and  flakey religious types she got to see everyday at work.  

I once went through a leadership training program and for some reason, because the graduation party involved music, dancing, and candles (evil apparently), my Catholic relative cried and prayed for me because she thought I had joined a cult. This same relative got up in arms about the movie, The Golden Compass, wanting it banned. Do you really think there's any way I could talk to her about atheism?

Maybe it's happened, but I have yet to see an atheist convince a theist to give up his/her beliefs. The best atheists can do is offer support to those as yet unbrainwashed or those on the fence who have lots of questions and doubts. But for the most part it seems atheists have become so on their own through either some life changing event or a gradual enlightenment through scientific education. The devout will not be convinced strictly by logical argument, so why put the strain on family relations? I just don't talk about it when around them.

I forget now what we were talking about but something in the conversation with my father recently caused him to say, rhetorically, "We're all God's creatures, right?" I just smiled and said nothing. What's the point of upsetting an 80+ year old man with getting into an argument about his beliefs? If he hasn't recognized the irrationality by his age he's never going to. Just leave him in peace.

Yea i did, but thats just impossible and is not worth trying, it will only piss you off and you will be one step closer to thinking of humans as a mindless idiots. The first atheist who convince a fundie to become an atheist should get a nobel prize.

Telling to a fundie, that he was wrong for all his life, and after death there is no heaven and ethernal life is sort of cruel and he would never accept it. It's just like telling to a terminal patien that hes got a month to live.

Maybe you should look in the "Irrational Precepts' forum.There's some threads about homepathy and stuff like that you might find helpful if she's into any of that.

I think I'm going to try to convince my mother that there's no link between autism and vaccinations. If that goes well, I may move onto crystal healing.

*bangs head on desk*

 

Being unable to respect your mother simply because she isn't as critical as you while forming spiritual beliefs shows a lack of maturity on your part.  She's simply rejected your sense-making paradigm--which is one of many. 

Is your mother a loving person?  Has she been a good mother?  A good wife?  A responsible, caring adult?  Or has she failed at some or all of these things?  Is she thoughtful and considerate, or is she self-absorbed?  These are the things to be considered, not the fact that she makes sense of the world differently than you. 

Probably because rational, mathematical thinking doesn't apply to every aspect of life.  See:  love, art, etc. 

I find it hard to respect atheists who judge people by their beliefs.

I try hard not to judge people (except based on their actions maybe), but it is a human condition. I only find it difficult when I find out that someone is strongly religious, but I still try to put that behind me and treat them like anyone else.

I thought my Mum was an atheist (even though she is very new-agey), I know she rejected christianity, but in a conversation with her the other day I found out that she does believe in god and souls (thinks she has talked to her parents since they died). I announced that I am a definate atheist, there was a moments silence while we took in each others information, then the conversation continued. We agreed that it is religion that is a problem as neither of our points of view really affect the way that we treat others. Guess she is a deist.

Went to my friends Catholic wedding on saturday. It wasn't bad, the priest was a bit funny (ha ha, not wierd). I know that they aren't that religious (both biotechs too) and the looks they gave to each other during the service were priceless. I held my tongue (apart from discussing with my wife how much money was spent on building and decorating the new church), but we had fun saying "RAmen" in all the right places and watching for others who weren't joining in the prayers (quite a few).

On allergies: challenging the immune system from a young age seems to help prevent it. Studies are showing that if you have reason to believe a child may become allergic to something, then totally withholding it has the opposite effect (more likely to become allergic), small doses to tolerize the immune system seems to be the way to go. Our immunologist at work has some children on a dose of one chocolate covered peanut per day. (this is for if they may develop the allergy, obviously not for thse who go into anaphalaxis!)

Jmm,

Wasn't there something in that sacred book of yourse about not judging other people? Or does that just apply when it's convenient.

Cpt_pinapple,

So, your point is that you should be able to condemn a total stranger that you only know from a few points online because she judging someone she's known her entire life. Hmm...

And I suppose both of you would have no problem with someone wasting thousands of dollars on crystal healings or other pseudoscience-based practices, because, who's to say that having your aura cleansed or learning how to exorcise bad energies isn't a prudent financial expenditure. How open minded of you.

  Jakal didn't say anything about disrespect,  you did jmm --inventing opinions seams a commen theist arguement-- further jmm it was her spirituality that he disreguards,  NOT HIS MOTHER.  You are trying to agravate a situation that does not need it, then you add an insult about his maturity.  His maturity is fine, disagreeing with the irrational is mature, you are trying to add in christian guilt only because it is his mother. Jakal and his mother are not Christians so save it.  Two adults disagree---no guilt required.                                                                                                                                                   

               Has for questions about his mothers charactor;  more Christian gulit only; save it, it does not apply here. The disagreement is about rational ideals versus irrational ideals.   Not motherly actions.  Why does she take up with any new idea that comes from the East? Probably because of her (Atheistic?) understanding of Western ideals.  Pointing out that accepting one over the other based on location only; is irrational.  I'm sure theists would agree with that.

Judging people is never a safe thing and I'm glad every time I manage to avoid it. Unlike now, for example;
Thousands of dollars, are you serious? That's a robbery! Clean aura or keeping bad energies away isn't really worth of that. Now I'm beginning to understand the rage against the woo-woo. The more useless stuff is sold, the more expensive it is. If American mothers and grandma's are being stripped uhm...poor by unshamed sellers of extremely overpriced things under a New Age trademark, that's depraved as hell. I don't like it any more than you do, and I'm additionally angered, that it makes a rational people to believe, that all alternative medicine is a fraud. Yeah, in predaciously capitalistic United States it probably is, it's the only explanation. I'm sorry if I ever judged any foreigner for too much scepticism, it's probably the only way of a financial survival there. Here it's similar with seniors, being agressively forced to buy ultra-wool blankets, ultra-dishes, and ultra-banana peeling machines.

The most expensive, thing being here (in this house of a citizen association I live in) on stock I know about, is the Swiss gem-structured ware, made by using an original Tesla's patent, in a special chakra-like colored set, for the use of professional healers, and costs about 260 dollars. The advertising is done mainly by personal references of customers to his/her friends and family members, so far it was enough for getting a few hundreds of sold pieces in past years and references were always very positive.
 

 

OK, jmm, would you find it easy to respect someone who based their beliefs about everything - spirituality, science, current events -  on Star Trek Enterprise?

 

First of all, Jackal is a woman. Second of all, that's clearly not the only reason she does not respect her mother's attitude toward "making sense of the world".

 

What Jackal is saying is that it is the very way her mother "makes sense of the world" is irrational in such a way that she cannot respect her mother for it. I agree with her. I cannot respect a person who simply believes something because it makes them happy. You seem to think that "making sense of the world" is so important that we should not criticize anyone for beliefs about the world. This is clearly wrong. If I "make sense of the world" by killing everyone I know, then on your view, can you in any way criticize me for my actions? I don't think you can, unless you pick and choose who you are going to criticize. I kill everyone, but in court, I make the claim, "Ohh dear me! It's just how I make sense of the world!" Pardon my language, but give me a fucking break. I would never respect a person whose worldview is so unthought out, and so uncritical. I respect many Christians, even though I'm an atheist, because at least they are critical of things, rather than just accepting every little thing as true without question and without proof. Although, admittedly, most (Christians) DO accept everything without question and without proof.

Also, it is pretty clear that how her mother "makes sense of the world" directly affects her (Jackal). It may not be in a necessarily negative way, but such a mother's worldview could not affect her children's worldviews in a positive way in my opinion. Imagine a mother who, in order to make sense of the world, has to be drunk or high. Does that mean that teaching her children to be drunk or high, or even being drunk or high around her children, is A-OK?

Your claim that critical thought does not apply to love, art, etc is completely unjustified. Please back it up. Art has infinitely many ways to be critical of it. Art really is a science in that yes, you will often need inspiration, but to be a good artist, that's not all you need. You need skill. You need to hone your skills. There is no fantastic artist who works purely on inspiration. Love may not be a science, but if you are critical of people, then you're far more likely to end up with someone you love from the beginning, rather than possibly getting stuck in a relationship you hate and fear until it's too late, just because they were attractive (or something). I realize that the term "love" is incredibly vague here, so if you wish to discuss this more, let's get some definitions up here.

Basically, what it comes down to Jmm, is that you have no basis whatsoever for criticism, and you should just answer the questions she asked, if you care to.

jmm wrote:

This common theist argument usually arrives in the form of "respect others beliefs".

It fails to take into account that all beliefs are clearly not equal and every one of us displays a lack of respect toward various beliefs, word views, etc. at one time or another.  This has little to do with "maturity".

Some make a sense of the world by waiting for alien spirits to be erased from their bodies, some by damning homosexuals to a mythical place of judgment, some by de-humanizing those of diferent ethnicities, some by declaring holy war.

These beliefs may manifest themselves by trying to drown out or use violence against any dissenting voice... or burying innocent people alive because of their emotional and sexual attachments... some by lynching other humans in the name of god and some by driving planes into buildings, thereby murdering thousands of innocent humans.

Every belief should be held to account and examined to determine its overall health or destruction to our lives, especially those beliefs that seek to disrupt this process by a lack of critical thinking, dogmatic adherence or violence.

Your argument only succeeds if you can show that there is no harm caused by "making sense of the world differently" in these specific instances.  

What are the odds of that ?   

Says who? Why not? There are pleanty of credible scientists that apply rational science and math to study people of people in love, art, music, etc... They even apply it to the study of why people believe in religion.

Ah, my bad.  I actually suspected Jackal was a woman after I posted my comment, but I forgot to edit my post.   

Also, I didn't say her lack of maturity was the singular reason she had a hard time respecting her mother, but I'd be willing to bet that her lack of respect is at least largely rooted in immaturity. 

I know what Jackal is saying.  Why repeat it? 

We all have different reasons for believing the things we believe.  And while believing something because it makes you happy doesn't exactly guarantee your correctness, let's face it--neither does filtering everything through the scientific method.  In the end, I'd rather be happy than "correct", whatever that means.

No.  You can criticize someone's beliefs and still respect them.  Also, I'm not saying that all beliefs should be respected--those beliefs that go hand in hand with human rights violations should be soundly criticized, disrespected, and done away with.  But if someone's beliefs harm no one even though you disagree with them, you're just being an immature ass if you can't muster a little bit of respect, or at least indifference. 

Oh boy...I should have foreseen the shit storm of superlative anecdotes that has followed. 

Clearly, if someone's beliefs directly lead to some sort of human rights violation, then I'm not going to respect those beliefs.  I was talking about a particular instance--Jackal and her mother--and now it has somehow become this. 

I was speaking of beliefs that people hold which harm no one.  Jackal said she had a hard time respecting her mother simply on the merit of her beliefs, not any negative consequences following her beliefs, so that wasn't the issue--though I'm fairly certain this thread is soon going to be full of more anecdotes like yours.

Okay?  I mean, every child disagrees with their parents, and often ends up with vastly different beliefs.  That's just part of life.  Again, you have to deal with differing opinions in life. 

And as for the whole drinking and getting high thing, that's totally irrelevant.  I'm not talking about addiction, I'm talking about spiritual beliefs, world views, things like that.  They are two separate things, and I don't know why you brought them up.

I don't think I articulated my point very well on this.  To avoid diving into a whole big manifesto on love and aesthetics, I'll just say this: 

Art is definitely not a science, at least not in its creation.  You could perhaps analyze it scientifically after the fact, but I'm not really sure why you'd want to do that. 

And yes, there are some artist who work on inspiration alone--have you ever heard of outsider art?  Many of its purveyors have no artistic talent in any traditional sense, but create compelling works of art through inspiration and creativity.  Not everyone likes it, but that goes for everything. 

As for love, I wasn't talking about being critical while trying to chose a partner.  You have to do that.  I meant that falling in love makes very little sense, in that the person is eventually going to die and so are you, which will lead to tremendous grief.  It's necessary, but logically you'd be better off just being a hermit--though very few people actually do that.

You're not a moderator last I checked, so in all respect, that's not your call. 

Jmm, so your whole problem is how I chose which people to respect? That's my business, not yours. I strive to base my beliefs in reality, and I am free to feel less respect for people who don't bother to make sure their beliefs are based in reality. You are critisizing me for how I chose to lay my respect. You're saying I'm not allowed to take people's actions (the act of forming a belief) into consideration when I deside how I feel about them. Stop pressing your beliefs on me.

jmm wrote:

That really depends on how deeply rooted that sense-making paradigm might be & how much damage said "paradigm" is causing while you "allegedly" wait around for change.  There are a great many harmful world-views that have, and some at present are still, wreaking violence, death and destruction for a millenia or more and have easily survived criticism for just as long. 

First, I certainly hope you're able to draw a less extreme line here, for your sake and the rest of the humans living on this planet.

Second, history has shown that there are sometimes many degrees of separation between the common man and the endless violence he carries out.  If you support, and further seek to proselytize, a world-view that hurts or kills other humans, are you less culpable because you yourself did not hurl the hateful slur, enact the de-humanizing legislation or pull the trigger or ignite the bomb that led to the death(s) of an innocent life(s) ? 

Criticism can only be heard by those w/ an open mind.  As I already mentioned, many "world views" have defense mechanisms against any criticism.  You only have to open your own sacred scriptures to examine what should happen to and what is in store for those who... criticize or doubt.  This sort of close-minded tyrrany is what prevents growth.  

Surely no one here has to make any more lists for you of the world views that haven't the slightest right asking for any respect.

Each should be judged on their own merit or lack thereof.

And while we're speaking of merit, when do you suppose that seeking actual "truth" earns its deserved merit ?