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I find it interesting that you are married to a christian. Is he just not that in to it or is it a case where you don't ever discuss it? I imaging if he were the preachy type it would get a bit annoying trying to live with him.
I fell in love with him really fast and hard for reasons that had nothing to do with spirituality. When that came up, it was not an important issue. He's not one of those hatey Christians that are always hellfire and judging. He has a strong personal faith and that's what he thinks makes him a good person. And to me, the end result of being a good person is the important part. I don't mind if he gives credit to God while I give credit to our effort and the help of other people. We generally know where each other stands on matters spiritual (although I have never actually said the A-word to him I think he gets it) and leave it at that.
I don't know if it's going to get more difficult over the years, but my four year old has started saying stuff like "Daddy do Amen and Mommy no do Amen" ... I'm going to do my best to be impartial and let the kids make their own decisions.0 -
I agree with the poster above.
My partner is Roman Catholic and it's really a non-issue. He is laid back about his religion and doesn't have a problem cracking a joke about the church and taking the whole thing with a pinch of salt. His faith on the other hand (as opposed to religion) is something I don't think I am in a position to question. Neither has he ever tried to convert me. Basically we have mutual respect for our believes and the view of the world.0 -
My first wife was christian with a capital "C". I was also christian when I met her but I was on my way out. I guess at the time I just didn't want to painted with the brush of atheism. The word atheist has a very negative connotation that comes with it. She said she wanted to read the entire bible cover to cover. I agreed and so began the end of our marriage. She did not want me to examine what we were reading at all. I guess she was quite literal when she said she wanted us to read the bible. It was just supposed to be reading and nothing more. She declined to go listen to a group of historians discuss the origins of the bible and she was furious that I went. She told me that the bible was handed down to us from God.
There wasn't any room for mutual respect with her. She kept quoting me 2 Corinthians 6:14: "Do not be unevenly yoked with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and lawlessness have in common? What fellowship has light with darkness?" She said she wasn't budging so I was going to have to make my faith match hers. I quoted her Ephesians 5:22-33 "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."
I don't really believe it but I felt it was a fair play considering she was dropping that line of bull about me being darkness. The bible cause irreparable damage to our marriage and as a result she left me.0 -
My husband is quite a bit the same way about the Bible, in that he holds it in an esteem that I find a little inappropriate for a religion that prohibits idol worship. He was watching the Bible miniseries on DVD yesterday and they had gotten to a part where there was some killin' being done at which I said, "I don't like movies with violence" and he replied, "It's not violence, it's real. It actually happened." So I said, so did the murder of the woman who lived across the street from us, and that was plenty violent. Not sure if he got it or not but he didn't complain that I didn't want to watch the movie with him. (Movies in general are not really my thing and so he's used to me not watching them with him). But his faith, even when I find it absurd, isn't something that would cause me to leave. But sometimes I wonder if one day his allegiance to God will overcome his love for me. It hasn't yet. I hope it never does.0
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That is a legitimate fear and I wish I could say it was irrational but I have heard countless people actually brag to me that if their love of god ever came in to conflict with their spouse they would leave them in favor of god. I hope that is not the case for you.
I like how your husband seem to think the word violence means imaginary. It tells me he isn't the brightest bulb in the box or the more likely explanation is that he just wasn't listening to you and he had a scripted defense already written in his head. He assumed you would claim it was fictional and you claimed it was violent instead. So he ended up saying "It's not violence, it's real. It actually happened."0 -
I honestly think his response came from the fact that he thinks that if it is Biblical then God sanctioned it and it is not a bad thing. I hear it a lot from evangelicals when the subject of God-mandated genocide comes up. God hates disobedience and that's what happens when a population goes astray.
Think of Noah's Ark. One of the most popular nursery decorating themes. Animals! Boats! Animals in PAIRS on a boat! Rainbows! Adorable!! But it's pretty gruesome, actually, to think that all the REST of the animals drowned. As well as all the people, including the babies. How can babies disobey God? And surely not 100% of the kids and adults were such horrible people. Somehow that never gets talked about.
Anyway, he was talking about how he wants his children to see the Bible series (I assumed he was talking about his other sons/my stepsons, who are much older than our children together) and I said, well, as long as they're over 13 and they want to, fine. But I remember even when I was seven years old I walked in on my parents watching Roots (more violence of the type that that actually happened) and had nightmares for weeks of the few seconds of brutality that I witnessed. My daughter saw the part of the Bible series where Abraham was fixing to take out Isaac because God wanted a sacrifice and has been asking me for days now "why dat man want to cut dat girl" (Isaac had longish hair in the movie).
Reality is what it is, and parents do mistreat their children, and people do crazy stuff in the name of God, but these are not themes for a four year old to explore.0 -
I have to agree with you. The themes presented in the bible are way too gruesome to expose a four year old too. I also find it completely dishonest to expose them to the Sunday school version of the bible stories only to tell them the real version when they are older. Which is what happened with me.
When I was a kid I bought in to everything hook line and sinker because every adult in my life was telling me the kid friendly version of every single story there was. As I got older and my assignments were to read the actual bible I remember complaining to my parents and teachers about how key parts of stories were left out. Like it or not these bible stories were different from the stories I was told as a kid. For that matter I felt pretty badly deceived when I learned they lied about Santa Clause too. I defended his existence quite strongly as a child.
To be honest I run in to issues with the bible in the book of Genesis. It is the first book of the bible and I can't even get through that before I start firing out questions that no believer has yet been able to actually answer.0 -
Glad to have found this group.
I am 26, almost 27, married with an almost 5 year old!
I was 12 years old when I told my mom that I did not believe in god. Prior to that i went to church every week, roman catholic at that, so it was not a blind decision. It was made out of logic and the fact that when people preach about god and jesus, that I feel they are almost in a fog and it just seems so disillusioned.
I never really associated myself as an atheist but I guess I am?!? It has only been the past year or so that I have begun to say I am in fact an Atheist.
My husband is also non-religious... I don't think he is as against religion as I am and he has not been open about the anti-religion as I have always been. I guess because I did not hide the fact that I do not believe and I think the bible is a farce that it helped him to be more open about how he felt.
We are obviously raising our daughter as a free thinker, open minded and logical!
We view religion, all of them, as a cult.
Anyway, I am glad to see a group for Atheists on here!0 -
Well hello there meg and I am glad you found us as well. I am raising a 15 year old that is autistic. I have a daughter as well she lives primarily with her mother who is a fundamentalist christian. That is like nails on a chalk board to me but I am work through it.
I look forward to hearing your perspective on our discussions here.0 -
Hello everyone,
Other than a few a posts in one of the other Atheists groups here, I have mostly lurked in this particular group. I think I feel guilty at times for being a lazy Atheist.
Now is as good a time as any for a little more background.
Anyhoo. I am married, with 2 boys (10 & 14).
My mother was a Baptist, but church was something we only attended sporadically; for me it was just a place where they made me go sometimes, like being dragged to the mall when my mother wanted to go shopping. :laugh:. I remember going to several different ones as a child, but I probably spent more time looking around than actually paying attention to what was being said. For some reason my brother was baptized, but I never was; not that it really mattered to me. I think he just expressed more interest in doing it. I don't consider myself as ever having believed in God or religion.
My wife is Catholic, but I don't think that religion is extremely important to her. She certainly does not try to convert me, and so far our children have not even attended a church. We've never pushed our sons towards one side or the other.
I just try to live my life, without having to worry about some higher power taking care of anything for me.0 -
Thanks for sharing, Scattered Thoughts.0
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Hello everyone,
Other than a few a posts in one of the other Atheists groups here, I have mostly lurked in this particular group. I think I feel guilty at times for being a lazy Atheist. Now is as good a time as any for a little more background.
Anyhoo. I am married, with 2 boys (10 & 14).
My mother was a Baptist, but church was something we only attended sporadically; for me it was just a place where they made me go sometimes, like being dragged to the mall when my mother wanted to go shopping. :laugh:. I remember going to several different ones as a child, but I probably spent more time looking around than actually paying attention to what was being said. For some reason my brother was baptized, but I never was; not that it really mattered to me. I think he just expressed more interest in doing it. I don't consider myself as ever having believed in God or religion.
My wife is Catholic, but I don't think that religion is extremely important to her. She certainly does not try to convert me, and so far our children have not even attended a church. We've never pushed our sons towards one side or the other.
I just try to live my life, without having to worry about some higher power taking care of anything for me.
Thanks for sharing that! That's pretty much exactly how it is for me as well (TWINS OR SOMETHING TEEHEE). I went through CCD and got confirmed and got taken to church, and while I never quite "believed", I didn't have a good grip on my dis-belief. I just kept all the questions to myself and went because I was supposed to.
Taking Philosophy 101 in college opened my eyes. Hey, other people think about this stuff too! I'm not weird!
My wife is Catholic as well, but she has fallen out of it more or less. We go on the holidays to appease the family but that's about it.0 -
Hello folks. I'm retired Navy; trying to get back into the sort of shape that I was in just a few short years ago. I retired and realized that there was no career depending on my physical fitness, so I started ignoring it. I was a freelance writer, which generally means a lot of sitting at a keyboard (and not a small amount of single malt scotch). I'm currently working for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Afghanistan, from my office in Kabul.
I've never been religious, though for a few years, during my ill-fated first marriage, I tried really hard to be Catholic. I was not capable of the suspension of disbelief necessary.
Much of my extended family are very religious. My wife, daughter and two step-sons are not. My views and theirs tend to put us at odds. Not because I don’t accept them, but because they just can’t accept my lack of belief. I have never been one to need or seek validation from others, so it doesn’t bother me as much as one could assume.
I’m a strict vegetarian, or as strict a vegetarian as one can be in a deployed environment.
My fitness peak when I was still active duty. I was 75 kilos and was running nearly 100 KM per week. My long runs were at 13 KPH. I’ve got quite a long way to go to get back to that sort of shape.0 -
Hi everyone!
I'm Sabrina, 27, married and a SAHM to 3 boys.
I've been atheist as long as I can remember. Even though I went to church as a child I never really thought much about it. It was story and play time for me.
I'm glad to find a group like this.
Feel free to add me as a friend on here :-)0 -
Hey everyone been using MFP for a while and it works great. Happy to see there is an atheist group on here. I still don't understand how at this day and age people still can have faith. Or wait yes I do ignorance. I have a feeling that a significant amount of people would consider themselves atheist had they a working knowledge of science and the scientific method.
Anyway yay for MFP and working out and stuff. Add me if you want look forward to hanging out on these forms0 -
Happy Friday all!! I'm Andrea, 25, and a recently outed Atheist. I've been a "non-believer" since the age of 12, but played along with my families religion mostly for the free brunches after church. Lucky for me, my parents let me stop going all together at the age of 16.
As for MFP, I recently rejoined 2 days ago, after a couple months off my diet. I've lost in total 75-80 pounds since January 2012, and I'm ready to lose the final 65 to get to my goal weight! Glas to see there are fellow Atheists on here. Now we can congratulate each other on OUR hard work, and not "gods" miracle of helping us through it!!!0 -
Hey there! I've been on and off of MFP for a year or so now I think. Now I feel as though my life depends on me losing weight, so I'm working hard at it! I've been an out and loud atheist for 4 or 5 years now, an out lesbian for 13 years, and a happily coupled lesbian for 1 1/2 years. Waving hello from Seattle! 0
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Hello Seattle!!! It is always good to see a new poster in the atheist forums. I hope you are able to stick with it and lose all the weight that you want. I hope you are able to lift heavy weight. I am a huge proponent of that. If you ever need to chat with another godless atheist I am here.
Is your partner going to be joining you on the fitness track? If she does tell her to join us on the atheist forums.0 -
hi all, I am not new at all in fact I deleted my account a while ago when I was at my goal weight but I came back ( I missed it ) I live in south Australia, im 46 and have no beliefs in supernatural crap. ( tell anyone that believing in a god type thing is supernatural and watch them argue lol ) I am trying to maintain my weight but it either goes too low or too high aaahhh. seems harder than losing it. anyway I have just the 1 friend on here so your welcome to add me if you want to. I look forward to using this group now I know it is here. :flowerforyou:0
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Welcome back! I will be sending you a friend request asap.0
