There is no god and adults are assholes.
Actually as a kid I realized that what I was taught in the bible and church were metaphors and not things to be taken literally. I mean, a lot of it went against what we learned in school, and school actually made sense.
Only much later in my teens did I realize that many Christians do take the Bible literally. It was then that I decided to completely abandon my religion.
Same, as a little kid I had no idea the adults actually BELIEVED what they were telling us, it just seemed like stories. I was so confused when I found out they believed it was all real. Then again when as a pre-teen I found out they thought homosexuality was against the rules - love? They thought love was wrong? I had gone to church for so long and that idea had never crossed my mind.
I remember having my first same-sex crush when I was around 11 years old. Unfortunately around 10-11 was also when I started to learn that “gay” was a slur and a shameful thing, and a bit later that it was a sin too. I would fall into deep self hate and internalised homophobia for the following 10 years…
I’m straight as a board, and it was the earlyish 1980s so a more backwards time but I still found it utterly shocking. I remember it so clearly. It was a youth group evening and they were talking about sex, when they started talking about homosexuality I absolutely anticipated they were going to talk about the issue of hate towards gay people, so when they went in the other direction I was floored.
I have never understood the metaphor argument. When I was a believer I believed it all literally. If this stuff is a metaphor then what it is a metaphor for? Also if it is a metaphor how come (especially in the prophets) the Bible spends so much time listing metaphors and then explaining them? How come when the Bible self-references it treats itself literally?
Adam and Eve were the literal truth to Paul and he used it to create his theology of original sin.
This
That nobody is a “grown up” and that everyone is faking it.
We’re all just kids having kids.
Yes, and now, anytime I’m trying to get to know someone better, I’m strategizing as to what childish/dirty joke or well placed cuss word will break through the “fake wall” and allow me to really know this person.
You should try an initiation ceremony. It could help you feel like an adult.
When I was about 10 I realized that people of other religions probably felt just as strongly that their religion is “true” as I felt about mine and that I had no grounds to look down on them.
Fast forward 10 years and I became an atheist.
Not to mention all of those who believed in a religion that’s fallen into myth, or even been completely forgotten by history. Thor was someone’s Jesus
I used to spend a lot of energy being concerned what other people thought of me. How I dressed, how I acted, what I owned, etc. One day I realized 2 things:
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Most people are too busy thinking about themselves to spare any meaningful thoughts for me.
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I’m never going to see most of these people ever again so it doesn’t matter what they think.
After that I started directing that energy into making sure that I approved of my choices rather than hoping strangers would.
It has a name its called spotlight effect
Some people have decided to call it the spotlight effect
I just wanted to let op know its a thing and there are others with it and there are resources
Why are you wearing those pants?
Why aren’t you more like your father?
Why haven’t you liked and subscribed?
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Friends can matter to you more than family, and that’s ok, but family does a lot more for you than you realize.
I didn’t have a great family, but it was only when I was upset about a birthday party when I was like 12 where my mom made all the cards and buttons and stuff and I was so mad that it wasn’t the cool cards and prizes that you buy that I kind of realized it.
It dawned on me like two weeks later that my parents couldn’t afford any of that, but they took time out of their day, for like two weeks, even though they both worked too much, to hand-make approximations as best they could. Without me knowing, so I would be surprised.
Ever work a double shift and then spend the few minutes you have not working, sleeping, or cooking to hand-make party favors? Yeah, me either.
It still makes me cry thinking about how ungrateful I was and the look of sadness and yearning on my mom’s face when I got mad at her for not buying the “good” stuff.
When I was 20, I sat her down and told her about it and how bad I felt, and how I never knew how to apologize for it. We had a good cry, and she thanked me for seeing it eventually, and how happy it retroactively made her knowing I realized it so soon after.
After my nerve damage: there are some mistakes you can only make once.
Also: Life has no rewind button and shit can go south pretty fast.
Similar experience. Got in a bad accident when I was 15, entirely my own doing. That’s when I learned that some mistakes and their injuries are permanent.
Say what you mean; mean what you say.
No idea where I heard or read it, but preteen me internalized it and it’s become part of my creed to this day
I can learn everything I need to know about how to be a decent person from cartoons.
Cartoons have always shown me that being a friendly person, who is honest, do right by their friends and tries to do the right thing will guide me well through life. I needed to weed through the friends a little bit but that has held true thus far
Bluey teaches me how to be a good dad
Rag doll!
Obstacles do not block the path, they are the path.
I grew up watching Looney toons, and they taught me to be an asshole.
I did once try to drop my largest book on my dad’s head from as high up as I could get, my logic being that since it wasn’t an anvil, which was clearly artistic license, he’d probably be fine.
No one is gonna stick up for you and what’s right, you gotta do that yourself
…and if someone does, it’s because there’s something in it for them. They don’t do it for you.
You gotta be that squeaky wheel
Be the grease
In school, I happened to notice exactly when some random topic went from “uh, I guess I kinda understand this” to having it actually “click”. That clued me off to the difference between e.g. knowing a bunch of shitty formulae, and actually understanding the topic to the point where you can actually use it for problem solving. Also, that all the teaching and books I received revolved 100% around the former.
I had that moment when learning to code. I had like 98% or what I needed to know. Then one day I came across some random SO post, learned something that I really should have learned a while ago (the difference between static classes and instantiated classes, yes really) and then everything just fell into place and I realised I could actually write proper code now. It was a fun moment :)
For me it was variables. I know it’s as basic as you can get here. But when I figured out that I could store data in a little box to get later I was like “oh, I can do anything with this”
Also, that all the teaching and books I received revolved 100% around the former.
This is true, because understanding comes from practice. The teacher and the books can never create that click of understanding. Only the student’s side of the effort can do that.
Negative numbers. I just asked if there were numbers below zero when I was like 4, and my mom about pissed herself. Not that it stopped her from homeschooling me into ignorance instead.
The spawn is too dangerous. We must insulate it from too many sources of knowledge
If it gets too curious it may burrrrrn!
It’s alright, I asked why Santa would get me presents for Christmas and not my parents; was about 4… My dad still doesn’t like me today. Might be different reasons, but he has never said hahaha
“Family” isn’t what you are born in, it’s what you decide and stand for. Fuck that kind of “family” I was born with, these useless, manipulative, egoistic, stupid waste of oxygen.
As a kid I got a lot of “Do as I say not as I do.”
The lesson I learned is that a lot of grown ups are hypocrites. I saw this so much it made me decide I would always be honest with myself and others about why I was doing the things I was doing. It is not always easy, especially now that I have kids of my own, but it is much healthier in the long run. I teach my kids by example rather than preaching fake piety.
I was about 11 or so and acting out, my teacher said my name. I just froze for a moment and it dawned on me that was the first time he had said my name all day. Completely invisible unless I was doing something wrong. Just a square shape in a square hole unless I choose otherwise and if I do it by making my life worse.
I guess it doesn’t sound profound. Every guy knows this on some level but it really knocked the wind out of me at the time.
Want to join my team of supervillains?
There’s a book series called The Hammer and the Cross about an English bastard child of a noblewoman that resulted from her being taken by a Viking raid and later escaping back to her home. Then the Vikings invade to avenge the death of Ragnar (his 4 sons are each powerful Viking Jarls).
The way it handled the two religions clashing, where each was powerful based on how many followers they had, along with it being the first time I’d seen where Christianity isn’t presented as the Underlying Truth but was just another thing. I realized that it was a metaphor for how religion actually worked. If enough people believe in something, it gains power. Christianity won through politics and warfare, not through truth. There wasn’t anything special separating Christianity from other former religions we largely now refer to as myth other than the one Empire that united most of Europe declared it to be the truth and people were slaughtered until they went along with it.
That’s when I stopped being a Catholic that just hated going to church and was an atheist at first, then later settled into agnosticism since who knows what’s going on beyond what we can directly detect with our senses and tools.
If enough people believe in something, it gains power. Christianity won through politics and warfare, not through truth.
These two sentences conflict with one another.
To make them match you’d either have to change the first sentence to:
If a thing gains enough power, people believe in it.
Or you’d have to change the second sentence to:
Christianity won politics and warfare, through being believable.
It’s circular with my version and yours of the first sentence both applying. It gains power from people believing which then leads to more people believing. Though it also depends on the aggressiveness of the religion’s followers.
