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In reply to the discussion: I was raised Fundamentalist Christian. I know you all know stories, but here's mine: [View all]hunter
(39,114 posts)Such of these gods they worship are obviously reflections of themselves.
My mom was a Jehovah's Witness when I was a kid. I ignored the flag salute in school. One of my most awkward moments as a kid was in fourth grade when my teacher pointed me out as an example of religious freedom in the United States. That only added to my aura as a weird kid. My mom got kicked out of the Witnesses shortly after that because she couldn't stay out of politics. Then we were Quakers. I continued to ignore the pledge...
I was fortunate, perhaps, that my extended family wasn't uniform in their religious beliefs. The only religious identity of my Wild West family was "NOT MORMON!" The cool not-Mormon kids hung out together when my grandparents were young. But none of them could agree, for example, when, how, or if Christmas should be celebrated. I had only one grandparent, one of my grandmothers, who believed in the traditional Santa Claus television Christmas. Christmas in our home was always a time of religious strife.
What the adults in our family had in common was their antipathy to anti-intellectual authoritarian religious beliefs. If anyone was going to hell, it was those who couldn't love their neighbors, no matter how eccentric those neighbors might be, no matter their religious beliefs.
There were kids in our neighborhood who weren't allowed to visit our home for their parent's fear their children would be corrupted.
My parents are artists who met while working in Hollywood. They had very diverse friends and family who had all sorts of religious and anti-religious beliefs. The homes they've made have always been safe places for LGBTQ people, and this was so even when my mom was in her Jehovah's Witness phase, which in itself was her strong reaction against the worst of the Catholic Church. My mom is, at her core, a Catholic Social Justice Warrior, her political beliefs comparable to California's former governor Jerry Brown. She loves Joe Biden. My wife is a similar sort.
One of my brothers married into a fundamentalist Christian family and that's currently a source of great conflict within our families today.
In my family it's okay, even expected, to argue with God.
Like now, God Dude!!!
Those who don't believe in gods can argue with the raw universe itself.
None of that is blasphemy. When my mom's at the Pearly Gates she'll probably start a riot and the trap doors to hell will be opening all around her, swallowing up all sorts of people who'd lived lives of boring ignorant piety. She'll remain, awaiting entrance, by sheer force of will. My great grandmas were all fierce like that, even the one taken by dementia.
As I was raised, the greatest possible sin is to have a brain and not to use it.