Humanism

Davis,

One thing your Mother might not want to tell her friend is: “Oh, don’t worry!  Me and Ol’ Nick are just like this! *Crosses Fingers*” 🤞😁

I sometimes tell that to customers whose total comes up to $6.66 or something added to that.  The reactions can be funny. 😁

I think it might be cruel for your mother to reject her friend.

I believe that clinical depression is the source of the idea of hell for the human race.  It’s just a dark and horrifying corner of the human mind.

Hey Unseen,

If it were I…then I would do that (I have super strict limits with people in general and religion is definitely one of them). My mother is French Canadian, they are INSANELY polite (as you may know). They have a pretty hard time confronting people with personal beliefs and emotionally difficult confrontation. But I would imagine at…[Read more]

Your mother should just tell this lady “If we’re to be friends, consider this topic closed. What I believe is none of y9ur business as what you believe is none of mine. Bringing this up further threatens to destroy our friendship. I value it enough not to do that. Do you?”

Simon Paynton wrote:

It is sad to imagine someone so tormented like that. She’s probably a caring person, if she is so concerned for the welfare of your mother.

Around here churches and preachers push this fear of hell constantly and tell their flock to go save their friends, family, everyone from the punishment of their god. It’s an age-old r…[Read more]

It is sad to imagine someone so tormented like that.  She’s probably a caring person, if she is so concerned for the welfare of your mother.

It’s possible Simon. It could be something she had been worrying about and came to the surface or it could be a recent struggle with mental health or both. In any case it is quite sad.

If this person has suddenly “gone wrong”, it might not just be Covid related.  There might be some other underlying reason for it.  Clinical depression is full of visions of hell.

My parents are both virtually life long atheists. I believe they were baptised for social convenience but never attended weekly church or had any familiar religious activities. I was also baptised because their friends being my “god parents” meant so much to them. Apart from me visiting the church a couple times out of curiosity…that was also…[Read more]

Forgive me for assuming the possibilities, but two things come to mind when I hear that kind of story. One is that old age often brings with it various forms of mental deterioration where one loses a sense of recent memories and relies more on past memories in daily conversation. The other is a fear and obsession of one’s own impending death.

In…[Read more]

Davis,

Your Mother sounds pretty convinced and firm in her non-belief.  I doubt she could be “blackmailed” into belief,  but her friend is a mess.

Did she know your Mom was a non-believer, then just out of nowhere get concerned that your Mom was going to Hell?  That would make no sense if she was firmly convinced in her beliefs.

Davis wrote:

She isn’t mentally ill. Depressed, perhaps. I wouldn’t blame someone who honestly believes in hell for being terrified of a friend burning for eternity. Any caring person who honestly believed in this shit would be terribly upset about it. Hell is the most grotesque religious concept ever devised. It is what makes Christianity and…

[Read more]

She isn’t mentally ill. Depressed, perhaps. I wouldn’t blame someone who honestly believes in hell for being terrified of a friend burning for eternity. Any caring person who honestly believed in this shit would be terribly upset about it. Hell is the most grotesque religious concept ever devised. It is what makes Christianity and Islam two of the…[Read more]

It sounds like the lady might be mentally ill in some way, maybe clinically depressed.

I think we just need to dig a bit deeper. Its not a dead issue, after all. If we just use our skulls a little more we can figure this out.
That’s the spirit. Maybe we have a ghost of a chance at resolving this yet.

Or we can just give up and bite the dust. Perhaps this discussion is on its last legs.

But most norms aren’t random

Uhhh. Yes. A lot of them are. I mean…come on Simon, in parts of the world they lob off pieces of little children’s genitals. Want a less extreme example? To be presentable in an office in western countries a man has to wear an uncomfortable pointless cloth noose around their neck and in Southern Europe a woman has t…[Read more]