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A friend and I were having a discussion last night about the moment you announce to your parents that you are an atheist. The issue I want to address in this article is how do you handle this and should you handle this at all?
With the vast majority of us coming from religious backgrounds this announcement usually causes hell to erupt. Parents and grandparents believe they have failed their duties as guides to us and go into spasms about the fact that we no longer want to sit in church and listen to the Dominee waffling on for hours about flying angels dragging Elijah on a donkey cart to heaven.
Most of us are cursed with this dilemma because as Phae Rayden commented on here: “We are still considered very odd in many places”.
Some atheists on here will say it isn't a problem and parents should simply deal with the issue and get over it. Much easier said than done.
Now try being an atheist on a dusty farm being groomed by a religious man to take over the farming from him. A principled man that solemnly believed he has to live a good life because “God” forbid he didn't go to heaven. Got up every morning at 5 and woke the whole house so he could read the Bible and pray for all of us. So you are going to tell an old man such as this he believes a load of hogwash?
Yeh, right.
So what now? You hate going to church and you don’t have the energy to cause a heart attack in the family. The solution is rather simple. Don’t say anything because you don’t have to save the world or prove anything to anybody. This is your journey, enjoy the ride.
I know this sounds like a cop-out and the path of least resistance, but I promise you this is the wisest move you could make. You have to gain the wisdom to acknowledge that these older people have had this set way of thinking for more than 50 years and your time would be far better spent educating yourself with scientific knowledge than trying to convince them they are wrong. You have to ask yourself this very important question. Has their belief made them bad people? Are they so hideous to live with that life has become unbearable for you?
Charles Evendumber once said during a discussion that religion made his father a better man. That is the case in most scenarios. We know religion as a global collective is an evil force, but when we isolate our own little worlds, this “evil” becomes less pronounced.
Remember they are not our future. It is up to us to change our own destinations. They will die in the next 30 years and we will be left behind to deal with this religious cancer. So rather spend your energy on the Net to make our own generation see the light than bother with old people.
If you find yourself in a situation where you are almost forced to go to church every Sunday, then turn the wasted time into something that has huge spin-offs for yourself. Girls could think about their next outfit or the specials at Edgars Red Square.
I made sure I was at church first because I wanted to sit at the very most back of the church. From this vantage point I could observe every young potential virgin lamb enter and could plan the way the wolf was going to pounce and devour their flesh. There can be nothing more gratifying than sexually corrupting a bible reading virgin teaching her the wisest and most important lesson of the Bible. There is no way Eve could ever have resisted a Cobra standing up and spitting at her. Women love snakes and so much better if they can talk as well….
Celebrate yourself in a world of Christians because now you have erased the mental restraints they battle, their world is your oyster.
