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I feel that there are some interesting parallels in this article between the journey of this young queer woman and us in the StayLDS crowd. (I’m not 100% sure what queer means in this context but the author uses the descriptor, so I will too)
Quote:Growing up queer in a religious home was never easy. I didn’t come out until my early 20s and had been living away from home for about four years. I had stopped going to church at that point, and the echoes of the warnings I’d heard all my life that gay people are damned for all eternity had faded.
I find this interesting in part because I feel that a person could be gay and Christian. There are different flavors of Christianity and some are more accepting of openly gay members. However, for the individual, I imagine that the experience of Christianity could be forever tainted by the particular church and Christian associations from your formative years.Quote:Ironically, my bachelor’s degree in religious studies was what finally killed my belief in a creator God and organized religion.
I think that her studies exposed her to many many examples of people claiming to speak for God and then using that authority to do bad things. I also imagine that there are also plenty of examples of religious organizations behaving badly from a collective standpoint. I’m sure that could sour an individual on the whole proposition. I still think that a person could believe in Jesus while largely disavowing the whole movement that came to call itself Christianity. However, I can also understand why she might be suspect of the entire story. As in, Why does the Christian founding story/myth have any greater validity than that of any other religion.Quote:Whereas when I was first struggling with my sexuality all I felt was anger, I now see the importance of church for my parents and what it brings to their lives. Until last year, it was literally my dad’s whole life. I now find, especially at Christmas, that there’s a certain comfort in the familiarity of the music and the stories that I’ve learned to enjoy in my own atheist way.
Yes, indeed.Quote:Navigating these conversations will be challenging, and as our son grows up and perhaps shows more interest in their beliefs, we will have to adapt. I don’t want to tell him that I think my parents are wrong, but I will tell him that theirs is just one of the many ways that humans understand the universe.
Lots of ideas and ways to add meaning or context to mans place in the universe. There is beauty and hope to be found there … mixed in with some rubbish too.Roy wrote:I feel that there are some interesting parallels in this article between the journey of this young queer woman and us in the StayLDS crowd. (I’m not 100% sure what queer means in this context but the author uses the descriptor, so I will too)
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Quote:Navigating these conversations will be challenging, and as our son grows up and perhaps shows more interest in their beliefs, we will have to adapt. I don’t want to tell him that I think my parents are wrong, but I will tell him that theirs is just one of the many ways that humans understand the universe.
Lots of ideas and ways to add meaning or context to mans place in the universe. There is beauty and hope to be found there … mixed in with some rubbish too.
The first point is that often people (including children) confuse their values or hide their values because they think their values are not popular or may be rejected by those close to them (those in families or close friends). The book strongly suggested that it is important to do two things concerning other’s values. The first is to never demean a person for their values and always respect their values. The second is to clarify your own values to them. The reason to clarify your own values is because if you do not (according to the book) the other person will not have any reason to think that your values and beliefs are sincere.
For me – concerning man’s place in the universe. Two principles: 1. Anything that can happen or occur can be made to happen again if there is intelligence that understands all the parameters and how to duplicate what caused the occurrence. 2. If evolution can occur in this universe, then at some point there is, of necessity, a point in which intelligence (humans) can evolve to create a universe.
I would be most interested in any other points of view about what is possible in this universe – especially any point of view different than my own.
Roy wrote:
Quote:Ironically, my bachelor’s degree in religious studies was what finally killed my belief in a creator God and organized religion.
I think that her studies exposed her to many many examples of people claiming to speak for God and then using that authority to do bad things. I also imagine that there are also plenty of examples of religious organizations behaving badly from a collective standpoint.In the book I’ve been reading,
The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Churchthere was a finding that the more education people have the more likely they are to believe in the orthodox LDS religion. The book doesn’t indicate what KIND of education (no disciplines mentioned) but I found that an interesting statistic. People with less education tended to be more lax in their standards and less believing overall. There are always exceptions (for example, I feel that many people on StayLDS are well-educated, yet not fully believing), but this was another statistic that startled me. I would have thought that well-educated people would have more faith in reason and philosophy and would tend to be more secular in their thinking due to their commitment to scientific method, for example. But that’s not the case apparently.
SilentDawning wrote:
more education people have the more likely they are to believe in the orthodox LDS religion.
Fascinating!One possibility is that Correlation does not mean Causation. IOW, those individuals that have strong roots in the LDS church might be more motivated and empowered to reach higher education. Given the church’s encouragement of education that would not be much of a stretch.
SilentDawning wrote:In the book I’ve been reading,
The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Churchthere was a finding that the more education people have the more likely they are to believe in the orthodox LDS religion. The book doesn’t indicate what KIND of education (no disciplines mentioned) but I found that an interesting statistic. People with less education tended to be more lax in their standards and less believing overall. I heard this mentioned a lot while I was at BYU. But I would suspect the type of education makes a big difference. I have known many doctors, lawyers, dentists, and engineers in the church, but very few historians, psychologists, or physicists (and those few have tended to be some of the more unorthodox members).
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