Elizbaeth Posted January 26, 2018 Posted January 26, 2018 I have a deep nagging desire to have big celebrations on all the holidays, and I love family traditions and miss the ones I had growing up. The problem is that almost everything that tied my family together was religious in some way, and I haven’t come to a good conclusion on how to mesh the community and tradition of religion with what I actually believe. I’ve even gone so far as to consider being “culturally religious” so that I can have all the social and traditional benefits of belonging to a church community. Anyone else felt felt this way? How did you solve it and give your family tradition?
Siegfried von Walheim Posted January 26, 2018 Posted January 26, 2018 30 minutes ago, Elizbaeth said: I have a deep nagging desire to have big celebrations on all the holidays, and I love family traditions and miss the ones I had growing up. The problem is that almost everything that tied my family together was religious in some way, and I haven’t come to a good conclusion on how to mesh the community and tradition of religion with what I actually believe. I’ve even gone so far as to consider being “culturally religious” so that I can have all the social and traditional benefits of belonging to a church community. Anyone else felt felt this way? How did you solve it and give your family tradition? I can definitely relate. I don't think it's the best solution but I think I have a good one; Celebrate the values and treat the stories as value-teachers rather than facts of history. I don't know how real Jesus and the Biblical stories are but they do have a whole lot of value and teachable-moments to them. I'd consider doing what Stefpai does--teach them as stories to be learned from rather than historical fact. If your sons ask "Hey Mama is this Abraham fellow really the father of nations?" then you might honestly reply "I don't know but does that really matter? Something happened thousands of years ago to inspire the story and (insert value/lesson learned here) is certainly something applicable to modern times". I'm a Roman Catholic, but I'm not a religious Roman Catholic in the sense that I have a firm belief in God and the infallibility of the Church. I think there's a whole lot to be learned and I don't discount somebody for having a firm religious belief so long as it isn't irrational (i.e. they don't just say "because X told me to" or "I would be beaten otherwise" or whatever kind of consequentialist crap they might have) but I'd tolerate a lack of an answer (i.e. they don't "know" why they believe but simply do) because that's a significant step towards honesty and humility. I don't have a lot of family I'd want to see involved in my future family's lifecycle, but I might have in-laws I would want to see. If they were especially religious, I'd be all right with that so long as they don't bully my children (or give me any cause to believe they would). It's fine if "Grandpa" teaches the story of, say Abraham, as historical fact and I treat it as something that might be true and highly exaggerated because this teaches my children that I am not infallible and don't have all the answers--and I'm humble enough to admit that. Simultaneously I'm not rejecting the good value that can be learned from these culturally foundational stories, just opening my children to the very real possibility that they're either false or exaggerated. And ideally, I don't care if my children are Roman Catholics or not; what I care about is them having solid and correct moral values with the clarity to see how they can be applied to everyday life and plausible workplace, school-place, or whatever environments. It's not the faith in God, Heaven, and Hell I care about it's the wisdom of having the lessons derived from them. However I am making this "general plan" with the impression my children will have an IQ around 120, as mine is 145 and assuming my future wife is at least 120 then most likely our children will be smart if not geniuses. If my children are unlucky and are born with average or poor IQ however, I might have to rethink the above plan because they might never be capable of abstract reasoning to the same degree we can. Of course I seriously doubt this bad hypothetical will come to pass (as a man I'll greatly reduce the chances by both selecting a smart woman and also making sure no one damages my children IQ via beatings, bad food, or whatever) but it's not impossible. I suppose I ought to ask, how intelligent do you think (or know) your sons are? Are they smart (110+), normal (95-105), stupid (-95), or something above or below? I don't know if it's possible to accurately guesstimate a toddler's IQ but I think you could get a rough estimate based on your's and your husband's IQs and how easy/hard it was to each your little ones the basics. I am mainly asking because you may need to be extra careful about exposing your children to wrong beliefs/opinions because presumably a smart child could figure it out him/herself.
shirgall Posted January 26, 2018 Posted January 26, 2018 Family dinner. Game night. Going to a show. There's plenty of traditions. One of ours is watching Christmas Vacation on Black Friday. 1
Tyler H Posted January 26, 2018 Posted January 26, 2018 What do you think it means if you remove religion and your family is suddenly "untied"?
Jsbrads Posted January 29, 2018 Posted January 29, 2018 Family dinner! Totally. I would like everyone to put their phones down for a while too, but I doubt I will be able to accomplish that for more than very short times. Vacation. Eating out. Outings. Child sports, and similar activities. Many traditional celebrations are secular, but I get it. There is an old Jewish tradition mostly unpracticed, that when something good happens to someone, that day every year, they have a Thanksgiving and invite friends over. Get 5-6 people doing this and your years isn’t that empty anymore.
RichardY Posted January 29, 2018 Posted January 29, 2018 After listening to some of "12 Rules for Life." and life being identified as Evil by Tolstoy, better perhaps to remain ignorant of things and proceed as "normal". Recommedation was something a bit different, from picnics and family dinners. SNAFU FUBAR"Saving Pvt Ryan". SNAFU "The Pacific".
M.2 Posted January 29, 2018 Posted January 29, 2018 I suggest putting the replacement of religious holidays to the UPB test. If everyone in a society suddenly gave up religious holidays, what would happen? Hedonistic festivals of Netherlands and Sweden? Morbid gluttonistic gatherings of Japan and China? Petty and sour family dinner conversations of France and Czechia? Materialistic Christmas markets with a pinch of truck attacks of Germany and England? ...Or maybe you could go to midnight mass, light a candle, enjoy listening to the hopefully angelic latin songs, sitting on the freezing benches beside your fellow peasant stumbling through life, spending a couple hours empathising with a dead guy on a torture device, and being glad that you are not in an atheist shithole.... Just a thought. 1 1
RichardY Posted January 29, 2018 Posted January 29, 2018 GLUTTON BOWL!!!!!!. kobayashi greatest athlete to ever live. Whether eatting cow brains or his speciality hotdogs. Also that Japanese gameshow "Endurance" looks interesting.
S1988 Posted January 29, 2018 Posted January 29, 2018 How about a weekly family night? When I was a kid, my mother, sister, and I would go out every Tuesday night to a restaurant. It was short-lived, though, because my mother could no longer afford to do it. Hopefully, if you go with this option, it'd last for many years. It doesn't have to be on Tuesdays. Pick any day of the week you wish. You can go out to a restaurant or prepare a special meal, then watch a movie or play a game.
Birdiefly Posted February 10, 2018 Posted February 10, 2018 I was raised by atheists, and i am an atheist myself. The only place religion was part of traditions where at my school. Once during Christmas and once during Easter we went to church. Traditions in my family may have sprung from christian and heathen traditions, but we do it because we enjoy it. We get invited to multiple holiday feast at my mother in law, and i will carry out that tradition too, when she cant do it any more. In my community there are often public events in the small towns we live next to, and we often meet friends and family during these events. My partner/boyfriends family have a summer tradition where they set up a tent in their backyard, hire a band, and then they have a huge grill party, where the entry fee is either lots of beer or a bunch of food, everyone comes to the party, both kids, adults and elderly, it is extremely cozy and fun. I hope it helps
Elizbaeth Posted February 11, 2018 Author Posted February 11, 2018 Thanks everyone for the feedback. I’ve been MIA for a while just because i try not to always be on the internet, but I’move read over your responses and have thought about them all. @Birdiefly @Mishi2 @RichardY I think that all of you have said what I was mire if less hoping to hear. I have had a hard time with this simply because I saw a lot of hipocrisy and lies that we’re lumped in with all the good. I’ve really been loathe to toss out all the beautiful, meaningful traditions in totality and I guess I wanted to know that other atheists have successfully implemented the traditions of religion without the lies. Thanks for the feedback, guys! @RichardY your second post was quite funny. @Siegfried von Walheim You give wonderful responses! I think my children are brilliant - I don’t have an IQ year, and they’re both very young, but both me and my husband have high IQs, and when I watch my kids I see them figuring out the world quickly and studying things very intently. This does comfort me - I feel less anxious about introducing them to the religious traditions. I would really hate for them to miss all the richness and beauty of the holidays. @S1988 @shirgall @Jot @Jsbrads I love all of these suggestions! I would only say that I was looking for suggestions about the “big holidays” rather than weekly traditions. @Tyler H It probably meant a lot of negative things. It was my FOO, and I have very little in common with them now.
Jsbrads Posted February 12, 2018 Posted February 12, 2018 Winter solstice, summer solstice, first day of spring, first day of fall, Memorial, Veteran’s, July 4th, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day...
shirgall Posted February 12, 2018 Posted February 12, 2018 18 hours ago, Elizbaeth said: @S1988 @shirgall @Jot @Jsbrads I love all of these suggestions! I would only say that I was looking for suggestions about the “big holidays” rather than weekly traditions. The big holidays around here are still Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthdays. We're just not religious about them.
S1988 Posted February 12, 2018 Posted February 12, 2018 Perhaps you can tap into your creative side and invent your own holiday. Who says you have to limit yourself to conventional ones? For example, you can create a holiday called [insert your surname here] Day and have the day focus on anything significant to you and your family.
DonaldJ Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 On 1/26/2018 at 3:36 PM, Elizbaeth said: I have a deep nagging desire to have big celebrations on all the holidays, and I love family traditions and miss the ones I had growing up. The problem is that almost everything that tied my family together was religious in some way, and I haven’t come to a good conclusion on how to mesh the community and tradition of religion with what I actually believe. I’ve even gone so far as to consider being “culturally religious” so that I can have all the social and traditional benefits of belonging to a church community. Anyone else felt felt this way? How did you solve it and give your family tradition? _________________________________ That's easy.. You live and write your own story, your own book of life... Permit me to illustrate with a new parable.. The parable of 'The skeleton at god lake'.. In the middle of the great dessert was a lush secret oasis, full of date palms, olive trees, strawberries, plants and fruits of all kinds, and a calm quiet pristine lake of pure sweet-water, water so sweet it tasted like maple-syrup has been added to it... [by the way, I found that water near the BC Alberta border, where I met an adolescent female Bigfoot lassy up-close, and way too personal.. The sweet-water was burbling out of the ground, hidden and protected by a perimeter of devil's club bushes.. I did So get stung by those horrid thorns.. Everyone should meet that plant at least once..] A lost man trekking across the dessert, expecting to slow suicide, escaping the horrors of a crumbling murderous life-stifling dysfunctional degenerative loveless society, his flesh baked and bleeding, painful beyond words, comes upon a great calm lake in the middle of the dessert.. He falls to his knees, bible in hand, profusely praying to the great lake to quench his thirst, heal his wounds, restore his life, give him salvation... A year later, a lost man trekking across the dessert, expecting to slow suicide, escaping the horrors of a crumbling murderous life-stifling dysfunctional degenerative loveless society, his flesh baked and bleeding, painful beyond words, comes upon a great calm lake in the middle of the dessert.. He notices a kneeling skeleton, beside a tattered weathered bible open at the last chapter.. He runs and dives into the great silent lake, drinks his fill, his wounds and burns healing in seconds, his pain fading in seconds.. He swims and paddles in the great god lake, feeling his spirit fill with love and strength, his youth restored.. He walks back onto the shore, picks up that vile book, and flings it into the dessert sands, its vile pages fluttering in the winds in flames and particles.. He walks into the great lake, swims to the otherside, and begins to author his own book of life and living his way.. just like you are doing... You trust in yourself.. Religion does not trust in you...
DonaldJ Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 Elizabeth.. I have more to fully answer your big question.. We were created by the alien nephilim giants for meat, by their adding their genes to the DNA of chimps, 15,000 years ago.. Our DNA analysis proves it.. They ate human brain tissues, failing to realize we were related.. They all died of Kuru, while they were in early process of populating this planet, or they would be farming and eating us today... The aliens instilled in our brains, a mind governor anomaly in the creative center of the right brain top center, near the brains largest arteries.. The moment we are processing thought using more than the permitted 7% mind usage, the conditioning restricts our head nerve plumbing painfully, thereby causing a migraine which pain killers can't alleviate.. The headache victim begins reciting religious dogma like preaching it, and the conditioning reduces the nerve plumbing restriction, and fires the human's bio-morphines.. The cristinsane cries out 'praise god!'.. 'Stoned out your tree' you will be... There are two major things you must successfully complete to escape the meat-herd in becoming human.. You Must successfully complete the proverbial '20-years introspection', which is to solve All the thoughts in the 'akashic records' (the 'flow of knowledge').. 3/4's through it, you are presented with the data how to neutralize the mind-governor conditioning.. The last two thought packages in the akashic records are how the afterlife works, and how to work it.. You cannot take its lessons out of context.. That would drive you insane, and maybe dead.. It isn't easy to force the mind conditioning to self-destruct, it is extremely dangerous, and may well be fatal, and it is extremely painful for a couple minutes, but it totally frees you from dogma.. It makes you into a human being, a sorcerer, and ascendant.. Sorcery only works with love for all life.. Without love, sorcery shuts-down.. The aliens instilled all our religious beliefs in our brain's creative center as a joke, to maintain the meat-monkeys passive and quiet, believing there was a better place for them after the chopping block and stew pot... The conditioning permits a maximum of 7% mind usage.. 8% mind usage causes us a wicked migraine.. We need a minimum of 28% mind usage to even begin to understand how the afterlife works... Elizabeth, you have no worries your majesty.. I am here for you... This earthly life is proving grounds for angels.. Seems you did it your majesty... If you wish to feel the proverbial gates of the afterlife, only its first facet, next time you come upon a road hit critter still alive.. stop, tell it is safe, you are there for it, watching out for its teeth and probably lunge to bite, carefully get its head resting on your plastic covered leg.. They do so have bugs.. Careful, some raccoons have rabies, don't do it with raccoons, they will so always try to Bite.. Rabies shots won't be fun.. Maybe trickle a little water or a coffee creamer into the critter's mouth to break the ice.. Then you would be 'mummy'.. You absolutely Must have plastic between you and it.. Softly caress away its pains, softly comforting with kind soft words, till it passes.. They do understand English.. Could take hours.. It might just get up and walk away.. They always turn and thank you.. If it died, and you have a good mind and strong spirit, you will see its spirit leave it as a geometric shaped little cloud, expanding slowly back into life's building materials.. Your tear ducts will empty like 'rivers'.. Get through it asap.. Scan it.. You will find it is full of fear.. Explain to it that it is welcome to share your vehicle as long as it does not touch your controls.. Try to pull it into you.. Tell it 'you know what I'm trying to do, You do it!'.. It will slam into your solarplex so hard it could knock you clean off your feet on your back, and probably will, feeling like a full-force karate sidekick to the chest.. A year later, find it in you, ain't easy, attach a tiny backpack to it, and fling it out into deep-space, instructing it to 'find out for you what's out there'.. Command it to 'return in 90-days to the second, to teach you what it found', in a second.. Best be sitting on something with a soft back then.. It is gonna hit Oh So Hard!.. When I did it, it slammed me to the couch Hard, smashing a hole into the gyproc wall.. I suppose it could be consider to be a little dangerous, but well worth the experience and the rewards... Researchers found two huge stew-pots near a massive mound of deep butcher-cut human bones in an alien giant's settlement.. They found escape-proof enclosures and breeding facilities for their human meat-animals.. Humans were like stewing squirrels and rabbits to them, and slaves and toys, and later mates after their females died of kuru, being the second classic symptom of kuru... Before a human can realize the afterlife, the student of life Must complete those two items.. There is no other option for anyone, but for an ascendant to push you into the afterlife, and that just ain't gonna happen, save for a few, 2 or 3 very special humans.. The afterlife is Not for humans.. They would destroy it like they destroyed this planet and themselves.. First thing a human would do in the afterlife would be to 'pee on the roses', and kill and eat something defenseless and innocent, and probably my friend, and probably break something for fun.. Heaven is void of human spirits, and will remain thus.. Hell is heaven's shield against demons.. I've seen what happens to demons trying to get into heaven.. It's messy...
J.L.W Posted February 24, 2018 Posted February 24, 2018 I have a lot of eccentric beliefs that don't fit into a traditional structure but as long as you can assert small changes for yourself, then I think you can find a good balance. Just by carefully removing the limitations that some religion and obligations produce. For instance, last Christmas was a good one for me I ate extremely healthy, no alcohol of chocolate. I felt absolutely great because of this and watched a film I wanted to watch. Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows. Beliefs are slow moving things that take years to form, test and integrate into your physical life, so I don't see a quick solution to this sort of query.
J.L.W Posted February 24, 2018 Posted February 24, 2018 On 22/02/2018 at 7:00 PM, DonaldJ said: Elizabeth.. I have more to fully answer your big question.. We were created by the alien nephilim giants for meat, by their adding their genes to the DNA of chimps, 15,000 years ago.. Our DNA analysis proves it. Holy hell man you're making us nutters look bad!
neeeel Posted May 22, 2018 Posted May 22, 2018 On 1/29/2018 at 4:31 PM, M.2 said: I suggest putting the replacement of religious holidays to the UPB test. If everyone in a society suddenly gave up religious holidays, what would happen? Hedonistic festivals of Netherlands and Sweden? Morbid gluttonistic gatherings of Japan and China? Petty and sour family dinner conversations of France and Czechia? Materialistic Christmas markets with a pinch of truck attacks of Germany and England? ...Or maybe you could go to midnight mass, light a candle, enjoy listening to the hopefully angelic latin songs, sitting on the freezing benches beside your fellow peasant stumbling through life, spending a couple hours empathising with a dead guy on a torture device, and being glad that you are not in an atheist shithole.... Just a thought. because youre not poisoning the well with your descriptions of atheistic vs religious celebrations/festivals at all.
smarterthanone Posted May 27, 2018 Posted May 27, 2018 Skipped the weird comments but this is what I do. Celebrate christmas or any holiday I want, but no no no religious stuff. Like christmas tree... cool. Presents... cool. Nativity... nope. Mass... nope. A tree and presents and model trains and snow globes and lights and egg nog are not religious in any way. We also did dreidels and latkes and a menorah too but with no religious part either. Why not? Anything goes when you don't have to follow any specific rules.
Recommended Posts