Attn: Atheists

Otherground
1

ok...first...I AM NOT TRYING TO BAIT YOU...SERIOUSLY I AM NOT.

nor do I know if I agree with it or not.

There was a study done at Yale into atheists and their relationships with their own fathers. In the study most of them had poor or no relationship at all with their fathers. I was an agnostic at one time and had a horrid relationship with my own dad.

Now here if you care to share...and I would appreciate total honesty.....what sort of relationship did you have with your own father.

one of the findings in the study "suggests" thats why atheists and agnostics have such a hard time in believing in a "heavenly father" because they had a poor or no relationship at all with their own dad.

AGAIN..I'M NOT LOOKING TO EVANGELIZE OR PROSTILIZE....I'm just sincerely interested.

 

2

and if somebody starts to evangelize..I'll kindly ask them to edit their posts.

3

If you are looking for the perfect father, better than your earthly father, just become a Christian :)

I don't think this is true, and to be honest I think the idea is a little off. 100 percent of athiests drank milk when they were babies, I wonder if milk causes atheism?

the rev

4

again John, I'm not saying I agree with it...nor have I even read the entire study.

5

Sherm,

don't waste my time with your stupid threads.

the rev

6

LOL...your the one who clicked on my stupid thread!...to quote every porn producer ..."you don't like it don't watch" :-)

7

go back to the nature ground psycho

the rev

8

go back to the nature ground psycho

ROFLOLLOL...I actually really just laughed out loud!

9

dude...I got nothing but love for ya...but you are sort of odd...in a good way of course.

10

OK I'll bite. My relation ship with my father wasn't the best as a child. It is much better now. (I'm in my fourties.) However, I'm still agnostic to the point of atheism. Also, a heavenly mother wouldn't have been an easier sell. My disbelief stems from the lack of evidence of the supernatural not the sex of an alledged God.

11

My relationship with my father was not good at all. He cheated on my mom and split to Haiti to get a divorce and remarried. We talk now on friendly terms, but I can't say I have a lot of respect for him. I don't hate him or anything. I just recognize he wasn't a good father.

12

I do remember some really good times with my father.  We did a lot of fishing together.  I was scared of him quite a bit to though.  For good reason if you saw the beatings he gave to my brother and sister.  I do remember trrying to talk to him about some problems.  I was being picked on by a neighborwhen I was 8 years old, and his advice was to hit  him back twice as hard as he hit me.

I can think of quite a few instances where he gave me horrible advice.  When I got older (10-15) years old I can only remember him playing with me once.  We played catch football for about ten minutes, and it was awesome.  I still rememer it vivdly to this day, and it makes me feel great inside.

I looked up to my father trememdously.  If he was watching TV  I would to. If he was doing work around the house I loved to help him.  I enjoyed just being with him. 

Overall a good Dad.  But we didn't have the closeness that I desired so bad.  He has grown in some ways in his old age but he has a long way to go in others.

He was a devout Catholic when he moved to Canada, then after I was born he started to slowly drift away.  Perhaps because his Mother was an extremely devout Catholic.  We always prayed at supper, and went to church when Omi and Opa came to visit.  Which was only a handful of times as they lived in Germany.

What hurts more than anything is that he and my mother would always make fun of my interests.  They would tell me such and such was a waste of time, and try to direct me to something else.  I wanted to take karate so bad when I was 14 but they wouldn't pay for it.  They said it was stupid, and I would quit right away.

Well after putting up a heavy bag in my room, making dent marks in the walls from nunchuks,  beating up every kid around me, having a massive stack of black belt mags, and this went on until I was 18 you think they would have realised how much I loved martial arts.

Didn't matter though cause that stuff was "stupid", "what do ya need that for", "it is a waste of time", "do something useful".  Even to this day they still ask me If I still do that jiu jitsu shit.

For the record I am still undecided if I will give my children any religious intsruction.  It is tough for me to see this issue clearly.

13

Cherrypicker

I know what you mean.

If you, being a man, was not encouraged to train martial arts, you can imagine the pressure on me, being a woman...

I knew when I was a child that I wanted to learn that stuff that would twist the articulations of the body - and nothing on earth would give me a clue that the name was jiu-jitsu.

I could not even think of the possibility that my parents would actualy allow me to train any other thing but ballet - which I love too - but even so my mother was paying for it so she could tell the other mothers how cute I was, and my father was always complaining about the clothes prices for the year end show.

There are parents that should be forbidden to exist...

14

i used to be agnostic, pretty near complete atheist. and yes, i didnt have much of a relationship with my father too.

that all changed when i EXPERIENCED God

15

I was never an atheist neither agnostic.

I always believed in God since my early childhood. I never doubted his existence.

16

My dad and I had a hard time dealing with each other when I was a teenager, because I questioned his beliefs.

But I'm glad we are both over that ( have been for years now) and even though we disagree on many issues, we have gotten to the point where it doesn't matter and life is too short not to have a good relationship regardless of our religious differnces.

I love my pop! I really do! I think he is a closed minded redneck but he's my dad, and I love him none the less.

17

oh, sorry. I'm not an atheist, just a heathen.

18

I had and continue to have a wonderful relationship with my father, who provided for our family very well. Religion was never a part of our home. What irrevocably innoculated me from believing the modern Christian point of view was not a bad relationship with my father...it was reading and studying the bible carefully and taking a good, honest view of this world we live in.

19

btw, Sherm, one could easily construct the counterargument - that those of us who miss their father or have them absent find a surrogate in God, "The Father".

20

btw, Sherm, one could easily construct the counterargument - that those of us who miss their father or have them absent find a surrogate in God, "The Father".

oooook...you need to take that up with the people at Yale...I said I'm not sure if I agree with it. 

I had and continue to have a wonderful relationship with my father, who provided for our family very well. Religion was never a part of our home. What irrevocably innoculated me from believing the modern Christian point of view was not a bad relationship with my father...it was reading and studying the bible carefully and taking a good, honest view of this world we live in.

and some could say that they studied the Bible carefully and taking a good honest view of this world...and come away exactly the oppisite of your experience.