Krieger

My dad is great... and he is an agnostic.

DRFseven

I think there may be something to the idea that people who experience breaks with their fathers are more likely to "lose their religion", but I don't buy Vitz's theory of causation. I thought about this for some time before I ever saw anyone else's theory regarding the "bad father" correlation and this is my theory:

I think abusive fathers can force a break in the rose-colored glasses with which we view our parents. Freed from the normal childhood constraint that parents can do no wrong, we are more likely to be able to look honestly at them and size them up accordingly; "This son of a bitch is wrong." Once we realize that our fathers can be so wrong, we realize that they may be wrong about anything, including the systems upon which they base their most cherished beliefs. This realization was forced upon me as a very young child, and, though I knew better than to say so, I thought he was one fucked up individual who was plenty wrong about a lot of things. I thought he was pathetic. When children lose respect for a parent, the idea that "if Dad believes it, it must be true" flies out the window. I think many religious believers never lose this infantile way of using their parents as standards against which all things are measured. In fact, Vitz's theory could be stated another way; people who have kind, loving, and religious fathers are less likely to be able to assess belief systems without their fathers' biases. Though of course this is not always true, in general we see this pattern.

However, there is certainly more than one way to reach a conclusion.

[ May 26, 2002: Message edited by: DRFseven ]</p>

sensate

This is a typical evangelical christian witnessing tactic. Make the nonchristian examin and doubt him/her self. Switch the focus from them onto you. Pure emotional manipulation. They are just trying to downplay the intellectual reasons for not believing in their religion and making us second guess our atheism or other nonchristian beliefs.

2tadpoles

I won't say my dad was wonderful, but he was hard working and a loving guy. Much more openly affectionate than my mom, for what it's worth.

Yeah, I guess my dad could be held accountable for my non-belief in gods. He taught me to use my head and ask questions.

bonduca

So....from reading this article I have learned:

1)God is a man. Everybody just instinctively knows that.
2)Anyone who doesn't believe in God obviously must be deeply messed up in some way.
3)Never mind about Noah's ark, forget about fossils. Put that Bertrand Russell nonsense away. You have deeper issues. Tell me about your father.



[ May 27, 2002: Message edited by: bonduca ]</p>

Corwin

Well aside from a few issues with my father, I have to say he's nothing bizarre or amazing. I argue with him from time to time, but there was never any abuse, my folks are still married... (oh but all us infidels come from broken homes and that's why we don't love JAY-ZUZ!!!!!)

I tend to avoid these conversations because everybody comes in and makes my still married non abusive not particularly fundie parents look really really boring.

lpetrich

Some people's families do not fit the stereotype of commanding/moralistic father and friendly/affectionate mother -- in fact, some families seem like the reverse.

I remember someone long ago who would have a taste for making remarks I found totally asinine and not very funny -- he attributed it to his father, who had a similar sort of "sense of humor".

But he also once found fault with me for having used two computer terminals at once, something that he attributed to his mother. This was late at night, and I had no competition, so I considered it OK.