Atheist Easter

I love my parents. I respect them both and hold them both in high regard in many ways. I do not, however, respect their faith. My mom has always been religious or at least of faith, but around 10 years ago or so, she became "born again". With a certain set of circumstances in life, dad ended up following along. I cannot honestly say what my dad really believes, but at the very worst, he believes my mom is worth him at least following along.

Anyway, they are members of a Methodist church that, from what I can tell, is possibly exclusively evangelical. Completely antithetical to my own beliefs - a strong atheist. Frankly, I find their religion offensive at its core. But like I said, I love my mom and dad and will be by them as much as I can.

So, today is Easter. In my view, a day of celebration of a fraudulent resurrection of a fake historical figure that entices children into celebration with the Easter Bunny and guarantees of chocolate delights (dudes and dudettes [err, I saw TMNT yesterday so cut me some slack], I practically live for chocolate) and other sweets. Christianity is sick in how it distorts everything to match its needs, co-opting pre-existing celebrations to do what it does best, fool people into adding numbers to the appearance of practitioners, to the point where we are now, millions in lunatics who actually believe their dogma, or worse, biblical literalists.

Most often, mo, tried to invoke prayer before we eat there. Usually she tries to get dad to do it, but he's doing it less and less, making me really wonder what's on his mind. When I was younger after their conversion, I defied the practice. I was becoming more open about my atheism on the internet, even had an essay I wrote published in an issue of Secular Nation and copied onto a few web sites. Defying them was something they took personal right off. These days, I let them have their fantasy, I just sit and wait for the madness to end. But what is funny is that when the whole family is together, such as today (immediate family and two wives), mom is surrounded by two strong atheists, an agnostic and a secular humanist. Lots of sore tongues form the biting there of. So I do my duty as a loving son and happy family member and silently - for the moment - suffer the insanity, as it makes them happy and I don't believe they are directly making the world a worse place... only indirectly

Thankfully xmas is pretty much the next forced down our throat xian holiday, where I'll happily go home and spend time (we do at least once a month anyway) doing a dinner with my parents. I just thought I'd point out the irony of the non-theists gathered around the praying theist.

To make it more intriguing I got home and read this exchange between Sam Harris (my somewhat hero) and Rick Warren, a relatively nice guy-but evangelical-creationist nut job. Not as cool as getting The End of Faith and A Letter to a Christian Nation as winter solstice (read as "that forced celebrating of xmas") gifts, but good enough.