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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

AIBU for not wanting my MIL to discuss Jesus and heaven with my 5 year old?

999 replies

Spearshake · 04/08/2015 13:29

I was just having breakfast with my 5 year old son and he asked me, 'do only people who love Jesus go to heaven?; I asked him who told you that.
Unfortunately, my tone must have been a bit sharp (hey, first thing in the morning) so he said, 'I don't know'

(I know it's his grandma though (my MIL) because she has been staying with us for the last week and we haven't been in contact with anyone else who is likely to make such comments) Unless he has been on the evangelical channels again

The problem is that I am an atheist, so I have a tough time with such discussions. He asked me what God is the other day, and I asked him to wait until his father gets home and he can answer (he was brought up more religiously than me)

Any ideas from fellow mumsnetters of a similar religious (or non-) bent on how to deal with such ideas would be most welcome.

Thank you!

OP posts:

BertrandRussell · 06/08/2015 16:21

"Of course, not only is religious doctrine unnecessary for massacring people, the greatest examples of which strike me as very atheist indeed, but science is also helping us to kill the inhabitants of whole cities, in one go."

What do you mean, very atheist indeed?

And it's not science that kills people, it's what people do with it. A bit like religion, really.

BertrandRussell · 06/08/2015 16:24

The difference is that nobody kills anyone in the name of science.........

KingOfTheBongo · 06/08/2015 16:28

"The difference is that nobody kills anyone in the name of science........."

It always baffles me when I see this being used. What is exactly is the point of it? What if I said "Nobody ever forgives in the name of science". See how meaningless this sounds?

BertrandRussell · 06/08/2015 16:29

I know it's meaningless. That's my point.

KingOfTheBongo · 06/08/2015 16:34

"I believe that a person without their own thoughts is a pathetic puppet. And I am right to.

BUT, being an atheist, I don't believe any such person exists."

You do know that several atheist scientists don't actually believe in free will? Sam Harris springs to mind.

DoraGora · 06/08/2015 16:34

I should not have said that the governments most responsible for massacres were atheist, I meant secular. I think Chairman Mao can happily be said to have been an atheist, but he was only responsible for an enormous famine.

SmillasSenseOfSnow · 06/08/2015 16:38

The bottom line here is that I have annihilated every argument you have attempted to make...you know it and so do I. Your embarrassment is such that, in a transparent effort to have the last word, you attempt to gain the moral high ground (after spectacularly losing the intellectual one) by telling me off for how I express myself. Because you, of course, have been nothing but polite and friendly, eh? (Balls).

You are a sore loser, Dora and that's all there is to it.

Well summed up.

keepitsimple0 · 06/08/2015 16:38

It always baffles me when I see this being used. What is exactly is the point of it? What if I said "Nobody ever forgives in the name of science". See how meaningless this sounds?

why is that meaningless? Both statements express something about science which is true; that science doesn't give a prescription on how to live life (at least not at all directly). science doesn't tell us whether or not we should do something, just how to do it.

Whereas religion does. Religions expressly tell us how to live one's life, and when people kill in the name of religion what's going on is that they are saying they believe that THE BOOK is the ultimate book and their interpretation of it is that they should kill in certain circumstances.

hackmum · 06/08/2015 16:38

My post of 9.46 this morning asked a question of religious people. I said that in my experience, religious people never attempted to answer it.

Seven hours later and lo and behold...no-one has attempted to answer it.

Here it is again: if we are to accept any religious hypothesis on the basis that it can't be proved wrong, are we to assume that (for example) the Buddhists and Hindus are right to believe in reincarnation, because we can't prove that reincarnation doesn't happen? Are we to believe in the existence of Jupiter and Apollo because we can't prove they don't exist?

ReginaFelangi · 06/08/2015 16:39

I don't think anyone's answered my similar post either.

KingOfTheBongo · 06/08/2015 16:46

"Ok lemon, can you give us an example of something that began to exist without a cause?

Radioactive decay. "

I know little about physics but even I know that the cause is an unstable nucleus trying to reach stability.

Better example please. Has been debunked many times apparently, so it shouldn't take too long, right?

KingOfTheBongo · 06/08/2015 16:49

hackmum, Christianity can be proven wrong (we could find Jesus' tomb for example, with his body in it).

I don't know too much about other religions, but, as a Christian, to the notion that some of them are partially true. Some are obviously fake, like Mormonism, but others may not be.

KingOfTheBongo · 06/08/2015 16:57

keepitsimple0, I just don't see how it is relevant in this discussion. I have often heard this from atheists, and I just don't understand why it matters.

(The funny thing is, when I point out that nazism has been linked to Darwinism, they usually don't find this very relevant either)

Mehitabel6 · 06/08/2015 16:58

Having caught up I think that chaiselounger said it all at 8.50 - that is if we are still talking about OP which appears to be lost.

TTWK · 06/08/2015 17:04

Not all religions are bad, but there are many bad people in the world.

Bad people do bad things. Sometimes, bad people can do good things. Good people do good things. But for good people to do bad things, you need religion.

DoraGora · 06/08/2015 17:07

Wasn't there an experiment once where people were asked to administer an electric shock to a stranger, and it was found that all you needed to get good people to do bad things was an authority figure.

DioneTheDiabolist · 06/08/2015 17:08

Bert, I love it when you're true to form.

keepitsimple0 · 06/08/2015 17:10

I just don't see how it is relevant in this discussion. I have often heard this from atheists, and I just don't understand why it matters.

surely it depends on the discussion, no?

There are two often poorly discussed claims. Religion is the root/cause of much violence. This leads religious people to assert that atheism can in turn be seen as the root or cause of violence (it's not). So, if the discussion is whether religion is bad, it's relevant.

The funny thing is, when I point out that nazism has been linked to Darwinism, they usually don't find this very relevant either

I don't see how it is relevant, but I will give it a shot. Religious people probably assume that because atheists believe in evolution, we think it is a good guiding moral principle. It's not. Evolution describes the process by which species change over generations, and this in turn is guided by "survival of the fittest". While I may think that's an accurate description of biology, it is clearly a terrible thing to apply to our society.

Mehitabel6 · 06/08/2015 17:11

To hackmum and post of 9.46
Whether there is a God or not is a matter of faith.
You can believe in God without any organised religion.

Religions are man made and so they have their own interpretations, rules, ways of worship etc etc. Many of them have things in common. Many of them felt themselves to be the 'true' religion and that is where you get persecution etc.

We know the moon is not God - man has landed there among other scientific discoveries. It is hardly surprising that early people assumed there was a moon god.

I can't see why you can't live and let live- rather than be so rude to those who think differently.

I can't understand why people have such closed minds. I don't think the same now as I did at 20 yrs. Who knows what I might think in 20 yrs time if I am still here? Certainly not me- I could have a complete change.

noblegiraffe · 06/08/2015 17:14

I don't know why any believer would bring up the Nazis when the Holocaust was probably the culmination of Christian antisemitism going back to the gospel of Matthew cursing Jews and all their descendants for killing Jesus.

DoraGora · 06/08/2015 17:16

To be fair, some Social Darwinists were nuttier than others, with Otto Ammon leading the charge for nuttiest of all, holding a theory that war was the only method of determining the fittest race.

SugarOnTop · 06/08/2015 17:19

"The difference is that nobody kills anyone in the name of science........."

Have people forgotten about the Atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima?!!!! There was no real need to cause so much devastation to life and the environment but the americans did it anyway to test their new toy and to show the world that their dick was bigger than anyone elses! i don't care how they dress it up - there was NO NEED to use an atomic bomb when they had other weapons at their disposal.

ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba · 06/08/2015 17:19

lemon

for the record you misunderstood what I said about thoughts coming from God. I meant it generally.
I should have elaborated on it, but I didn't, that is my fault, I didn't think you will take it literally.

I didn't mean that every single person has every single thought planted in their minds by God.
that is ridiculous.
I meant it generally, that thoughts, the thinking processes, ideas etc are the result of us having brains. which I believe were created by God.
so althought not everything we say or think is a direct replay of God's words or thoughts they can only exist because he created us.

I doubt you will be willing to understand what I'm saying.

but I'm sorry you felt insulted

SugarOnTop · 06/08/2015 17:20

Also don't forget about the animals used and killed in the pharmaceutical and beauty industries.......their lives matter just as much as human lives.

DoraGora · 06/08/2015 17:24

Truman wouldn't have said he dropped it for science. He'd have said he did it to shorten the war.

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