Originally posted by -Pr-
A difference of opinion isn't the end of the world.
No, but when it's a completely different worldview, and you're not talking about strangers on the internet or random acquaintances but family members and loved ones, there's a lot more tension.
Like, my mom, who I get along with and love, thinks my atheism is a punishment for sins that she committed or some flaw in her upbringing of me. So we have familial rejection, misplaced religious guilt, and supernatural thinking rolled into the same cancerous belief system. Again, we get along fine; given her beliefs, she's actually been very accepting of it, and it's been years since this has bubbled to the surface. But it's still there. And in trying to refute her, I risk alienating my mother, and/or stripping her of her beliefs that act as a support system and social identity for her. And I'm not from a particularly extremist or conservative family or city. I can't imagine how some people have it who are from such places.
The problem is never internet, political, or random public talks. It's easy to tell off *ssholes when you have no particular tie to them, and easy to accept differences in most other people. The problems are almost always personal ones. Classmates (as with the Penn Jillette story), family, friends, romantic partners, etc.
Originally posted by MF DELPH
My ex and her family are Jehovah's Witnesses. I was as well until age 14, then started going to a Baptist, Methodist, and finally a Pentacostal Church before my doubts made me give it all up around my graduation from high school. By the time I was 23, after a few years of private study and attending college, I finally came to terms with the fact that I didn't have a good reason or enough evidence to accept that anything supernatural existed (ghosts, spirits, etc), and if I couldn't prove anything supernatural existed (as in something verifiable, falsifiable evidence, not just anecdotal testimony [same reason I can't accept alien abductions]), I certainly couldn't accept claims about supernatural beings interacting with and playing a part in molding reality or human history, so the dominoes just fell from there. I actually offer that to Theists that challenge my position as a proposition for them to convert me back. If they can establish a collection of irrefutable evidence that the supernatural exists that's the first step towards starting a conversation with me about Religion. They'd then need to do the same for the particular entity they profess to get communications from existing and is what they claim it to be though. And then prove that this entity has communicated with humans. If they can do that we can talk. Until then, though, I just can't accept something so incredible at face value.
This is all pretty reasonable, and common for atheists. Still sucks in regards to your cultural situation, though.
When Bill Nye debated Ken Ham, the final question was "What would change your mind?" Nye answered "evidence." Ham answered "nothing." All kinds of sh*t rolled into a nutshell right there.