Brennan

Idyllic,

I know your question for directed at someone other than me, but I thought I would share my own parental experiences regarding these topics.

My daughter is very interested in religion. Not just religion itself, but how religion ties into issues of identity. She and I talk a lot about different ideas of faith, philosophy and metaphysics. When asked what I believe, I tell her I do not know what happens to a person's mind/psyche/spirit when they die.
We have friends of many different faiths and creeds here and I encourage her to discuss such things with them. She prefers to talk with our adult friends rather than her peers because she finds that most 2nd-3rd graders simply parrot back what they hear in church, or at home.

I tell her that I very much like the idea of a heaven/afterlife; that I find the idea of some day seeing all my deceased friends and relatives again very appealing. That said, like the debate between monism vs dualism, while I find the topic interesting and worthy of debate (best conducted over a pint or 2 of IPA for those so inclined and of age) I have no impulse to tie myself to any church's particular brand of afterlife prep.

I disagree with the sentiment that death without afterlife renders life meaningless. In fact I feel that life's ephemeral nature is one of the things that makes it so precious. We do what we can, what good we can with our time.

That is what I believe and what I try to impart to my daughter. Hopefully it will serve her whether she chooses to be a Christian, a Secular Humanist, a Shintoist, or what have you.

In closing, when talking about death with children, I'm always reminded of "The 10th Good Thing about Barney" by Judith Viorst: "Barney is in the ground and he's helping to grow flowers...that's a pretty nice job for a cat"

Honestly, I think it's a pretty nice job for any of us.

Sorry for the novella.
Just my 2 cents.
B.

---------- Post added at 09:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:43 AM ----------

I just had another thought...

Godblocking, would we use that word like cockblocking?

"The crazed preacher/WBC protester advanced on my friend but I godblocked him, stepping forward and asking if he could recommend a good reprogramming camp for my French bulldog, whom I suspected to harbor gay tendencies."

What do you think?
Should we get it added to the urban slang dictionary?
;-)

B.

__________________
"Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me." - Trent Reznor(Nine Inch Nails)

Idyllic

As far as I know, God is not a racist, intolerant humans are. Humans created and fostered racism in fear and ignorance and then used an omnipotence to push their homophobic ideologies on other humans as a form of control, imho. I cannot image the need to block God from any body but I could definitely see the need in "so I bigotblocked him."

__________________
you can tell them all you want but it won't matter until they think it does

p.s. I contradict my contradictions, with or without intention, sometimes.

telekinetic

Matthew 15:22-26 (New International Version)

22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."

24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."

25 The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.

26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

__________________
twisted no more

roachboy

i've been thinking about this godblock thing.
i think the idea is funny, but not so funny that i'd be willing to buy any stickers. so like that.
the point that the creator of the webspace is after is already made by the space itself, so in a sense existence would be superfluous in any event.

but if it existed i doubt i would bother with it.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Jetée

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

—Thomas Paine

- - -

To me: religion is great. Without religion, is to feel empty and lost.
Sure, some still feel that way when firmly engulfed in their teachings, but what good are teachings if they are not put into practice?

The real difficulty nowadays is a high percentage of those disputing the points and counterpoints of religion are in a box: whether they be atheists looking to entrance others to give up a deluded notion of God, or the rangingly-devout yet ever-believing God-fearing followers perhaps trying to impart unneeded wisdom; both have a tight, firm, and wrong delusion that religion can only be one thing, and that is an institution. Why can't it also be an idea? An innovation - an identity - an impartial intermediary of knowledge? Religion is what one makes it - whether it be abiding by strict dogmas, or instead learning universal truths along the way that were already realized: religion is one's self, our experiences, and a base moral compass of what we hold to be knowns, unknowns, and demarcations of human willingness unable to be grasped until by fate, greeted.

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

Ourcrazymodern?

I'd like to be able to block the recent spate of Mormon commercials.

__________________
BE JUST AND FEAR NOT