Hello!
I’ve been blogging here since June of 2006, kind of a long time.
During that time, I have used this site, I have used you, my fellow bloggers, for emotional support.
(Not just used, in a one sided way. I tried to give emotional support right back.)
Back then, I needed a lot of support, because my first wife, Pam was gradually dying.
She died in March of 2008.
I used The Grieving Room for some years, to connect with others who were like-minded, dealing with grief.
I got remarried in October of 2011,
but I still continued to interact at The Grieving Room,
posting more diaries there than anyone else, with the exception of the two moderators, who often wrote filler diaries, as I recall.
Then I switched to the Itzl Alert Network,
which was better, because it is a daily, not weekly series,
so I could check in each day, just after midnight, which is my ideal time for interacting here online,
since I am a night person.
Then, after the election, I switched to the Village,
which is a group of those who truly like Hillary.
After the shock of that election, I needed folks who seemed sensible, to interact with.
Hillary supporters seem sensible.
Now, I am shifting gears again.
I feel a need to talk about religion,
since there are so many millions of Christians who support Donald Trump, and, while they are at it,
they support Brett Kavanaugh.
Two of these Christians are my brother-in-law and his wife.
My wife and I live with them, in their house, and my wife is not truly on my side, on politics.
She tries to find fault with “both sides.”
Before I go deeper into my personal dilemma,
let me direct you to a previous diary in this series,
a diary that has the right questions, in my opinion,
the right questions we should ask ourselves,
when we talk about atheists versus Christians.
Here is the link to that past diary:
www.dailykos.com/...
Here are the questions:
1. A question about origin: Where did I come from? Where did the origin of life come from?
2. A question for purpose: Why am I here? (Do I have a purpose? Is there ultimate meaning to life? What is the purpose of life?)
3. A question concerning morality: How can I know right from wrong? (Is morality objective or subjective? Can there be be objective standards?)
4. Questioning destiny: Where am I going? What happens when I die? What happens after death?
5. The question for truth: How do I know any of this is true? What is truth? Is there such thing as known truth?
Let me dispose of numbers 1, 4, and 5:
1. Life, apparently, came from the ocean.
Look at the label of a bottle of multi-vitamins.
Chromium, magnesium, calcium, iron, etc.
What is in ocean water?
The minerals, especially salt, that are dissolved and brought up at the mid ocean rifts.
Our bodies are made of ocean water, with extra protein.
By the way, have you noticed how many people, not just Christians, but mostly Christians,
will ask the question,
“If there is no god, where did the universe come from?”
They have not stopped to ask themselves,
why do they believe in an eternal God,
but they cannot imagine an eternal universe?
The universe is eternal.
It had no beginning, and will have no end.
Every event is an accident, caused by all the previous accidents.
No god involved.
4. There is no life after death.
5. We always accept as true what truly seems to be true, deep in our subjective feelings.
Some folks do more digging, more investigating, before they feel more certain about things.
More debate about the true nature of truth, is like a dog chasing his tail.
Seems to me.
Now back to questions 2 and 3:
2. If we look too far into the future, say a billion years,
then we lose any sense of purpose.
We only feel a sense of purpose when we have shorter term goals,
so we can “see” the goal visualized in our imagination.
So, our purpose in life is to set goals, and reach them.
That is not a grand purpose, if you stop to think about it,
but if you keep on working towards goals, small, medium, and large,
you will feel good about your life.
At least that has been my experience.
3. The question about morality:
There is no objective morality, only subjective feelings about what we like and what we hate.
But as we work on our goals, and we see what works and what does not work,
calling different ways of doing things good or bad seems silly.
Makes better sense to think about what works and what fails to work.
Which brings me to my dilemma.
My brother-in-law and I are very close,
and we are working together on certain goals.
We are trying to get out of debt,
and build up savings,
and buy land in the country,
and set up small homes, maybe mobile homes, on the land,
one for my wife and I, and one for the in-laws.
As we move towards those goals,
we are repairing our old cars as they break down,
rather than going into debt on a car loan.
We are pinching our pennies, trying to eat more home cooked meals,
and less pizza delivery.
We are doing Bible study.
We have carefully read and discussed Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
These books help us with practical ideas,
and Ecclesiastes help us see our goals in life in a sensible light,
realizing what I write above about a billion years’ perspective eliminates all sense of purpose,
but doing something we feel is worthwhile, feels pretty good, so we should do that.
All that is in Ecclesiastes.
Of course, I understand that wise old King Solomon got his wisdom from others,
and living his own life,
and thinking long and hard about everything,
and writing it down.
There was no god that gave him any of these ideas.
Of course, my brother-in-law takes all this as truly wisdom from God,
communicated to Solomon, and written down for us.
Besides our Bible study together,
we attend church services on Sundays, together.
The pastor is a cousin to our family,
and he likes me, a lot, no matter that I do not believe in god.
We often chat, after the services, about his sermons.
He gives nice, useful sermons,
much like the wisdom of Solomon.
But since my family is some of the millions who seem so unreasonable to me,
with a narrow, and firm, religion,
and support for the Republicans,
and they sometimes hint that I might go back to being a Christian someday,
I often feel on edge.
I feel that I need some friends who think like me,
friends who are atheists,
but who do not hate the Bible,
(it has a lot of good ideas in it)
and who do not hate Christians who support the Republicans.
My family is not evil,
there is no objective evil.
My family is mostly loving and helpful to me.
I just want to relax and talk religion and politics with a few atheist Democrats.
I tried to do so, in my face-to-face world.
I announced to my wife and to her brother,
that I plan to attend a pot luck dinner at a nearby
Unitarian Universalist church,
in order to make new friends,
new atheist friends.
They were horrified.
The sister-in-law seemed especially, deeply hurt.
My brother-in-law claimed that if I make new friends,
those friends will turn me against him, against my family.
He told me that if I go and make new friends,
he will throw my wife and I out of his house.
So, even though I am a grown man in my sixties,
I gave in to him, the head of the household.
But why does he not see, that taking a hard stand like that,
makes me want to move out?
Does he not realize, that since we have the internet,
I can make new friends here?
So, I hope a few of you, those who are atheist Democrats,
can become my friend, or my closer friend, if you already know me from here.
Please, in the comments, do not slam:
1. The Bible (I think it’s full of great ideas.)
2. My family (I know, voting Republican makes them seem like serial killers, but they treat me with deep love and dedication.)
I hope I am not asking for too much.
Thanks for reading.