Azaran on 21/6/2018 at 23:09
Quote Posted by SD
I view religious faith itself as a kind of cancer, a cancer on humanity. You should be proud that she at least managed to overcome that. It's not much consolation, I know, but it must have been difficult for her to abandon her faith and seek proper treatment.
And here is one of the big hurdles of the religion debate, lumping religious faith into one category when it has many different facets, positive and negative.
- Fundamentalists killing the innocent and destroying cultural treasures in the name of their ideology
- People ignoring medical advice in favour of religious ideas
- Individuals finding personal fulfillment and solace through religious praxis (meditation, ritual, mystical exercises), whether the 'forces' they're connecting with are objectively real or just in their head
- Groups practicing charity and social work because of their religious principles (whether nobly, or as a ruse to convert others)
-Cults using religion as a means of social control and abuse
- Poets and artists creating masterpieces inspired by their religion (temples, churches, poetry, mythical epics)
All these things are distinct, but indiscriminately lumped together without discernment by people who attack religion. And it's a real problem
uncadonego on 22/6/2018 at 00:22
Valid point.
If there is one thing that humans could really stand to grasp and internalize, it would be love your neighbour as yourself.
Therefore:
It's not up to others to live up to your expectations, only yourself.
Love doesn't blow up an abortion clinic even if one believes it is wrong.
One does not behead people who don't embrace Islam.
One simply does not work out was is evil towards one's neighbour, because it is not love.
Simplest and most difficult thing for us to live by, because the world is complicated.
If we evolve in any direction, I hope it's that direction.
SubJeff on 22/6/2018 at 17:29
My condolences Gray.
I've seen this too many times; faith delaying treatment.
It is true that when faced with a difficult diagnosis like this many people return to faith they've left. I don't think it's a bad thing, unless it stops people taking proper advice. Don't be so hard on the faith in this case though, we never know what the alternative path would have lead to.
uncadonego on 22/6/2018 at 18:48
Early detection and treatment always improves a person's chances.
Gray on 23/6/2018 at 03:09
SubJeff, in this particular case, I beg to differ. Treatment was delayed by over a year. To me that is fairly obvious. With cancer, fast treatment is vital. As I said in my initial post, she may still have died, but fast treatment would have slowed it, given us more time together, perhaps a few years, maybe possibly even stopped it fully. What is absolutely clear is that by doing nothing for one full year can not have helped in the slightest.
[Edit]
Yes, I equal "healing prayers" with "doing nothing". This is the point of this whole thread.
Tocky on 23/6/2018 at 04:22
Sort of like the prayers for kids after yet another school shooting.
I wish folks wouldn't look for something to believe in. I wish they would try to be something to believe in instead. I guess that's too hard. You always fail a bit at that but I still think it's the only way. I certainly have no moral high ground to preach from but I know we could do a hell of a lot better than we have been doing. I see my grand kids having to enter this world and I worry.
Harvester on 24/6/2018 at 12:23
I'm very sorry for your loss, Gray. That must've been terrible, to lose your wife like that, but also know there's a chance her death might've been prevented if not for religious indoctrination. I can also certainly understand an antipathy towards organized relation growing from such an experience.
I might weigh in on the debate about religion later, but for now I just want to express my condolences.
SubJeff on 24/6/2018 at 23:20
Quote Posted by Gray
SubJeff, in this particular case, I beg to differ. Treatment was delayed by over a year. To me that is fairly obvious. With cancer, fast treatment is vital.
I know this, of course.
What I was saying is that when people don't have faith to turn to you don't know what else they might do, how else they might cope. People get depressed or angry and still refuse treatment. Some do worse. Of course you don't need to have faith to make sensible choices, but it's not only religion that makes people choose alternative therapy e.g. Steve Jobs.
Healing prayers are next to useless, of course. A positive outlook can do wonders though; even if it doesn't extend your time it can radically change the experience of your end time on earth, and by extension that of those around you.
heywood on 25/6/2018 at 12:52
Was talking about this with my wife who comes from a strong Catholic family. Some of the older members of her extended family are/were quite fatalistic; if they got cancer it was God's will. They weren't taught to refuse medical treatment. But they approached it thinking their survival was out of their hands, God would take them when he's ready to.
I could also imagine some people, who are carrying latent guilt because they strayed from their religion or feel they haven't been good enough, might think their disease is punishment from God. But guilt or no guilt, if you have a fatalistic attitude and you believe in the afterlife, then when you're stricken by a life threatening disease you might care more about redeeming yourself than treatment.
Gray, I have no idea whether this applied to your wife, just talking in general here.
Volitions Advocate on 25/6/2018 at 13:31
I have realized in recent months the damage that my theistic upbringing has caused. The funny thing is that it was mostly my peer group that lead me down that path. My Dad decided as a teenager that he wanted nothing to do with the church that he was raised in, and I made the decision fairly young to join up and follow in my grandparents shoes.
The thing is, I never realized just how damaging the influence of that institution has been on me. The minor mistakes I made as a youth being conflated into something so bad they considered it "next to murder" and destroying all sense of self worth I ever had. Of course the cure to a lack of self worth has to be the double-down-on-faith approach or else you're doing it wrong, and are told so by everybody: church leaders, family, and friends alike.
It has been a long journey the last year and a half for me coming to grips with what has really happened my entire life in service to that place. I have allowed myself more empathy for people than I ever thought possible, and the ironic thing is that leaving the church that tells me God is the ultimate dealer of empathy is the one act that gave me the largest capacity for it.
It's terrifying though. Confronting your own misconceptions and fighting to understand a world you used to be so adamant in proclaiming you understood wholly. No more safety net, no more "faith healing", no more praying to Jesus to find your missing car keys and believing that when you find them it was all because of him. That your faith made you more important than the poor wretched kids starving to death every day and that giving yourself a handy was more evil than some asshole oligarch who doesn't give a damn about how many lives he destroys with his methods of exploitation and "wealth-management."
Thank you for sharing Gray.
When the time comes, and I know it will, I have to be prepared to be the best ally my kids are going to have when they realize the same thing. When I left my abusive wife she was the one who doubled down on the faith, disguising religious arguments as practical matters that she uses in court to lay some psychoanalysis on me to try to convince the courts I am an unfit father. Much to the support of the members of her (and previously my) congregation. I've been seeing a therapist to help me through some of this stuff and I know I'm not the delusional one.. (anymore).
