Somebody asked exactly what I had said to him, and to be honest I don't remember the entire conversation.
However I do remember that at one point he called me arrogant for suggesting with certainty that there was no God. And my rebuttal to that was to suggest that true arrogance was believing so firmly that, out of hundreds of possibilities, YOU had discovered the one true religion, and were so positive in that belief that you felt empowered to construct buildings dedicated to indoctrinating people into your faith, frightening children into accepting your faith, and even traveling to foreign lands to disrupt the cultures of the indigenous people to tell them that THEY were stupid and ignorant for not believing in YOUR fact free religious faith instead of their own fact free religious faith.
It was somewhere around then that he erupted from his chair all red in the face, called me a Philistine, grabbed his coat, and disappeared into a whiskey bottle for several days,
Ah the memories!
Yes.
ReplyDeleteI grew up believing I was the luckiest in the world because I was white, Catholic and American. It is arrogant.
I eventually got over myself.
I have oftened wondered this too. I mean, people don't generally leave the religion of their parents, if they were taken to church and Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. When I was an 8th grader and going through Confirmation classes at the United Church of Christ my grandma had taken us to for years, I asked my mom if I could look into some other churches and belief systems. She was all for it, but we lived in a small town and had no car, so my studies went no further than the public library. And I was confirmed, but uneasy.
ReplyDeleteI did not attend church in college, nor after marriage, but a friend
invited me to her Brethren Church after our kids became friends. I am still going there, because they (we) follow the New Testament and are pacifists, which makes perfect sense to me. A few of the members are 'cradle Brethren,' but most of us came later, from the Catholic Church, the Baptist, or wherever. Much healthier.
VERY early on, I began reading philosophy. Plato. Aristotle. Nietzsche. Kant. LOTS of them.
DeleteAdmittedly, I began with things like "A child's guide to Philosophy" and things along those lines, but being very precocious, I soon got to the philosophers themselves. And it was due to THAT I began to wonder, then doubt, then laugh at what I was taught.
And people don't generally leave the church they were raised in because they aren't TAUGHT, they are brainwashed.
He was probably angry because you brought up something he has been supressing for a long time. It is scary to face fear. That he took to drink sure seems to indicate he was trying to escape.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. The sentiment expressed in the quotation is one we all need to remember and share.
Off topic: Sarsh's bestie Margarer Tharcher reportedly died.
ReplyDeleteCelebrities and politicians aren't safe from the judgments of Yelp users, either. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin -- categorized as "local flavor" in her hometown of Wasilla -- holds a one-and-a-half-star rating based on 134 reviews. "People Who Can't Spell The Word Definitely" scored two stars.
ReplyDeletehttp://money.cnn.com/2013/04/03/technology/social/yelp-reviews/index.html
He must be a very capable man to have done all you accused him of, rather than simply being a minor official of the Roman Catholic Church.
ReplyDeleteLiving abroad for many years I've suffered through similar accusations of dropping the bomb, enslaving millions of Africans, and wiping out the native American population, to note a few. My usual response: Yes I'm an American, and proud to be so. Yes, some Americans have done horrific things while others have done wonderful things. On balance, I think the nation of my birth has been a force for good in the world even though I'll concede we all could have been even better.
There are few, if any, unalloyed goods in the world, or so I believe.
Dave Lewis @9:42, thanks for providing some realistic perspective to balance Gryphen's tale.
ReplyDeleteWhy is God so mischievously silent on this point? Other than "talking" to a select few super-spiritualists on the finer points of setting up a belief system (and, incidentally, telling each one of them something different), he/she/it has proven to be noticeably absent from the table. What does he/she/it have against talking and working directly with the rest of us. It's like we're the Spiritual 99% or something. [Note: I just opened the door for the whole "faith" thing. Let the circular argument begin!]
ReplyDeleteA previous commenter wrote that most people don't leave the religion in which they were raised.
ReplyDeletePew research documented the opposite. Although personal experience is limited, "churn, churn, churn," is a phrase that's easy to remember. Converting to a different faith and abandoning the familial religion are both common.
No one can be grounded in philosophy without thorough knowledge of the works of Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, Kierkegaard, etc. At least read "The Cloud of Unknowing."
That level of thought takes effort. For those who persist in non-belief, study Robert Wright if you want to muster intelligent arguments for agnosticism, because most of what's written here would fail even on a middle-school level.
My Grandfather was a preacher at a local church. He used to drag me and my little brother down there every Sunday. We would hang out in the Sunday school after the lessons, 'till Gramps was done in the big people's room. One day when I was about 10, I decided to go listen to my Grandfather preaching. I remember him saying "Anyone who tells you that they KNOW what is true is most likely after something from you, I am here telling you what I believe."
ReplyDeleteHe was a little disappointed when I told him later that I believed I should stay home next Sunday, and every Sunday after...