| Pages:
1
2
3
..
5 |
Discipline
* DRUNKEN MONKEY *
Posts: 11900
Registered: 9-8-2004
Location: Over here
Member Is Offline
Mood: The Alley Dukes
|
|
Dave Moral
Question for you. Are you raising your kid as a muslim? Just curious as I didn't know if your wife was muslim as well. If so, how do you approach
Christmas with your little one?
‘Do you know what a love letter is? It’s a bullet from a fucking gun. Straight through your heart.’
|
|
|
DaveMoral
Posting Freak
Posts: 4334
Registered: 1-24-2006
Location: Ardmore PA
Member Is Offline
|
|
My wife is Muslim too. So we are definitely raising my son Muslim. Christmas is sort of hard since all his grandparents celebrate... we don't
ourselves, but we also don't exclude ourselves from their celebrations. So he gets gifts from the grandparents and aunts and uncles, but we are not
doing anything with Santa Claus. Funny thing, he knows who Santa Claus is on seeing the character, but I plan to just play it up like I would Batman
or Spiderman... he just a character they tell stories about. He's not real.
The hardest thing about Christmas is there are Muslim holidays around the same time usually, so I have to figure out a way to make those appeal to him
without Christmas-izing it like Hannukah was Christmas-ized. Which is sort of a brain teaser since Muslim holidays tend to be pretty somber. My
biggest thing now is going to be trying to get my parents and my wife's parents to put a little more effort into recognizing Muslim holidays so that
my son sees his holidays validated by family and not only see us sharing in Christmas and other such things.
I mean, an example... a couple weeks before Christmas was the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha which is celebrated after the Hajj pilgrimmage to Mecca every
year. It's one of the two biggest holidays on the Muslim calendar... but I don't know how to make it more appealing to a kid than Christmas. There's
no holiday where presents are given... and I don't want to cultivate the expectation of gifts in my kid either. Also, at the beginning of October we
had the end of Ramadan festival Eid al-Fitr... which I can pretty easily turn into a sort of Muslim Thanksgiving sort of thing(which I usually do
anyway, with a Tofurky and what not). 4 days ago was the Muslim new year... which being Shi'ites we don't even really celebrate as a festive thing
because it marks the beginning of 10 day seige that led to the killings of Muhammad's grandson Husayn and all but one of his sons and all his male
companions and the subsequent imprisonment of his only remaining son and all the women of his family. For Shi'ites this is a pretty somber time,
though a great Thermopylae-an tale of heroic sacrifice. 73 men against an army of over a thousand.
Anyways, Christmas poses some challenges... but it's also primarily a secular holiday anymore and the things I find most challenging are the Santa
Claus myths rather than anything to do with Jesus. Heck, unlike the Bible and Christians Muslims have reason to have a Christmas tree.... even if it
is a date palm. In the Qur'anic narrative of Jesus' birth Mary was sitting under a date palm and ate dates from the tree.
|
|
|
Discipline
* DRUNKEN MONKEY *
Posts: 11900
Registered: 9-8-2004
Location: Over here
Member Is Offline
Mood: The Alley Dukes
|
|
Interesting. I was curious because I knew you weren't raised muslim, so I didn't know if your family understood or respected your beliefs. I can see
the Santa thing being hard when your son goes to school because the overwhelming majority of the kids will be all about Christmas, Santa, and
presents. It's cool that you're not going to alter your beliefs to appease a holiday.
‘Do you know what a love letter is? It’s a bullet from a fucking gun. Straight through your heart.’
|
|
|
DaveMoral
Posting Freak
Posts: 4334
Registered: 1-24-2006
Location: Ardmore PA
Member Is Offline
|
|
Yeah, you know... I'm with Charlie Brown on Christmas in a lot of ways, it's over comercialized. Which is why this whole thing with these ultra-right
evangelicals braying every years about "they are taking the Christ outta Christmas" and the "war on Christmas" bullshit. Happy Holidays as a greeting
at this time of year makes perfect sense in a multi-religious and ethnic society.
In December and January alone you've got Chistmas, Hannukah, Kwaanza and New Year's every year. For a Christian alone it makes sense to say Happy
Holidays because they are going to be celebrating Christmas and New Year's a week apart. If you don't know what people are doing or their background,
happy holidays.
There's no bigger a threat to the religious conception of Christmas than they way that many Christians themselves make it more about giving and
especially receiving gifts than it is about how they view Jesus. Same with Easter, how many people with children... including Christians... actually
teach their kids to think about Jesus rising from the dead on Easter rather than have them out doing the seeming totally unconnected activity of
hunting colored eggs and getting baskets from the "Easter bunny?" My grandmother goes to church every Sunday and she loves Christmas, but I have
absolutely no memory of her ever talking about the religious context of Christmas to any of us grandkids when we were young.
The Santa thing gets to me with the case of religious Christians, because they apparently don't realize who they appended the name of Saint Nicholas
who gave money to the poor on Christmas, to the myths and legends of old European pagan societies... like there's a Nordic myth that has Odin giving
gifts and candy to kind children in their boots. Dude also rides an 8 legged flying horse. Plus, as the Norsemen are known for... a long white beard.
All at the holiday of Yule. It doesn't matter for secular celebrations of Christmas(unless you're atheist, and I'd wonder why you'd teach your kids
about a dude that they say "sees you when you're sleeping, knowns when you're awake" and all that), but for religious people it's got to be recognized
as being essentially a new god they are worshipping alongside what they already worship. Which, of course, they frown on in any other form. But when
you're leaving offerings of cookies and milk beside a tree in hopes that you've been nice enough to get rewarded for your good deeds from a character
that's mixed the name of an old Christian saint with a Norse god you're hurting the religious significance of your own holiday. Nobody that that says
'Happy Holidays' for the sake of covering everything that's coming up in the season does more damage than Christians who carry on those traditions.
Especially when it involves an image of Santa Claus effectively created and propagated by Coca-Cola. It's been a corporate holiday since the 1930s.
Bah, enough of my ranting. Hope no one takes offense, just getting some shit off my chest.
|
|
|
Discipline
* DRUNKEN MONKEY *
Posts: 11900
Registered: 9-8-2004
Location: Over here
Member Is Offline
Mood: The Alley Dukes
|
|
None taken. I know how strongly you hold your beliefs, and at least when you speak out as you did in the above post, you do so in a logical manner
that is rational.
‘Do you know what a love letter is? It’s a bullet from a fucking gun. Straight through your heart.’
|
|
|
DaveMoral
Posting Freak
Posts: 4334
Registered: 1-24-2006
Location: Ardmore PA
Member Is Offline
|
|
Haha, yeah, I try not to come off like a raving lunatic! 
|
|
|
tireironsaint
* BANNED *
Posts: 4299
Registered: 5-14-2003
Location: Colorado
Member Is Offline
Mood: Beltones
|
|
Dave, I can definitely appreciate your rant about the commercialized aspect of the holidays as I've done quite a bit of background checking on the
sources for all these supposedly christian traditions too. Of course, I'm looking at it from an atheist point of view instead of that of another
religion, so this may just be one of the tiny places where our ideas meet, but it's nice to see someone of any faith who has actually done a little
research.
As someone outside religion, it's astounding to me just how obvious the source of a lot of these supposedly christian traditions actually are. The
church quite literally made a point of lifting traditions as well as holidays from older religions just as a means of bringing "heathens and pagans"
into the fold. It amazes me that people can talk so heatedly about how they would never follow tenets from outside their belief while practicing
traditions that were blatantly stolen and grafted onto (very poorly, might I add) their religion. Easter is a prime example: rabbits and eggs both
being strong fertility symbols were stolen from pagan beliefs and turned into meaningless candy that christians hardly ever even question the origin
or meanings of. It's baffling to me that people who search for signs of their god in tears from statues and images on toast are blind to anything that
doesn't support their ideology.
Veritas odium parit
|
|
|
MarkV
Senior Member
Posts: 728
Registered: 9-16-2008
Member Is Offline
|
|
Every Xmas, Easter, Halloween, etc, Nat Geo and esp the History Channel usually have very good documentaries on the development of the these events
and how different pagan influences were tossed in.
Dave- I never got the bug up the ass about "happy holidays," either. I always looked at is as Christmas and New Year's Day being a week apart, and a
good amount of people having that week off, and it being sort of more of a "national holiday week" than the religious significance of the event.
|
|
|
Siczine.com
Posting Freak
Posts: 2351
Registered: 9-6-2005
Location: Philly
Member Is Offline
Mood: Cynical
|
|
| Quote: | Originally posted by MarkV
Every Xmas, Easter, Halloween, etc, Nat Geo and esp the History Channel usually have very good documentaries on the development of the these events
and how different pagan influences were tossed in.
Dave- I never got the bug up the ass about "happy holidays," either. I always looked at is as Christmas and New Year's Day being a week apart, and a
good amount of people having that week off, and it being sort of more of a "national holiday week" than the religious significance of the event.
|
Yeah, I saw that shit about Christmas on the History Channel and they talked about how Christians lifted the winter festivals that were in celebration
of the winter solstice from the pagans and turned it into Christmas to try to convert them to Christianity.
|
|
|
MarkV
Senior Member
Posts: 728
Registered: 9-16-2008
Member Is Offline
|
|
In reality, I believe it's essentially been "proven" that Jesus was born in the spring time, closer to passover, and the early Christian church bumped
the date around a couple of times.
|
|
|
MarkV
Senior Member
Posts: 728
Registered: 9-16-2008
Member Is Offline
|
|
And Halloween, being the amalgamation of Samhain from the Celts, a Roman festival and the All Souls Day traditions, and then more with Mexican
traditions once Catholics got over here.
I mean, it does make sense to do, from a "marketing" standpoint of a developing church. Plus, if you do any research on various religions in the
world, you'll find a LOT of parallels and almost identical stories/parables. So, it's not that weird to say, "we celebrate THIS day which is very
similar to YOUR festival," and incorporate some of the traditions into yours.
|
|
|
DaveMoral
Posting Freak
Posts: 4334
Registered: 1-24-2006
Location: Ardmore PA
Member Is Offline
|
|
Well, the funny thing is that every different major Church or branch of Christianity celebrates Christmas at a different time of year. It's not til
like January 6th in Russia.
December 25 is Rome's Christmas and the Protestants stuck with it, after all it was ingrained in their culture by the time Martin Luther came around.
Reality is... that was the day the Mithraist cult celebrated the birth of Mithra, a sun god, long before Christianity showed upon on the Roman wacky
religion scene. It's no coincidence that the Romans moved the Christian sabbath day from Saturday... as the Jews and Adventists still practice it...
to SUNday. Interestingly, they've got alot of the same priestly garb as the Mithraists apparently had.
|
|
|
jonnynewbreed
Posting Freak
Posts: 1091
Registered: 4-4-2003
Location: Dartmouth, nova scotia
Member Is Offline
Mood: Quite nice actually.
|
|
watch the film zeitgiest. Some really cool info on Christianity.
I myself have never been baptized as I was born of an Irish Catholic mother and a prodestant father who's parents couldn't get along. My folks
decided not to baptize their kids and I'm sticking to it.
|
|
|
MarkV
Senior Member
Posts: 728
Registered: 9-16-2008
Member Is Offline
|
|
Jonny-
No offense, my friend, but the word is "Protestant."
Dave-
" the funny thing is that every different major Church or branch of Christianity celebrates Christmas at a different time of year."
Different time of year??? Really???
|
|
|
Discipline
* DRUNKEN MONKEY *
Posts: 11900
Registered: 9-8-2004
Location: Over here
Member Is Offline
Mood: The Alley Dukes
|
|
| Quote: | Originally posted by jonnynewbreed
watch the film zeitgiest. Some really cool info on Christianity.
|
Definitely interesting.
‘Do you know what a love letter is? It’s a bullet from a fucking gun. Straight through your heart.’
|
|
|
DaveMoral
Posting Freak
Posts: 4334
Registered: 1-24-2006
Location: Ardmore PA
Member Is Offline
|
|
| Quote: | Originally posted by MarkV
Jonny-
No offense, my friend, but the word is "Protestant."
Dave-
" the funny thing is that every different major Church or branch of Christianity celebrates Christmas at a different time of year."
Different time of year??? Really??? |
Well, winter still, but like I said... December 25 for the Roman Churches who hold to the Gregorian calendar, and in Russia they do it on January 7th
because it's supposedly when December 25 would be on the Julian calendar. So it's different but the same. Even while still being the day of Mithras'
birth.
The Christian Churches of God, which is an Adventist church but I think different than the 7th Day sort, won't even celebrate Christmas or Easter as
pagan celebrations. They keep the old Hebrew calendar and all the traditional Jewish Holy Days.
|
|
|
jonnynewbreed
Posting Freak
Posts: 1091
Registered: 4-4-2003
Location: Dartmouth, nova scotia
Member Is Offline
Mood: Quite nice actually.
|
|
What can I say, my lack of religion must have had some effect on my ability to spell...no offense taken.
Don't get me wrong, I was married in a church and will go to church with my mother in law (she is a very holy gal). I went to my nephews baptism over
the holidays and almost jumped up and asked if they would consider throwing some water on my head since they were all set up to do it anyway, but my
wife wouldn't let me.
I believe in something, I'm just not sure what it is.
|
|
|
Siczine.com
Posting Freak
Posts: 2351
Registered: 9-6-2005
Location: Philly
Member Is Offline
Mood: Cynical
|
|
My stance on all religions is that none of them really know what the fuck they are talking about. And atheists I will never get. They hate on a
religion because they can't prove that there is a god but can any atheist prove there is not a god? Hell no.
|
|
|
DaveMoral
Posting Freak
Posts: 4334
Registered: 1-24-2006
Location: Ardmore PA
Member Is Offline
|
|
The way I see it is this... religion is a method. It can't give you all the answers. After all, God in Its essence is ultimately unknowable to any but
Itself. Thus most of us see facets of Truth via our own imagination because the faculty by which we can recognize the similarity of a thing to
ourselves. So we concieve of God in ways that makes It comprehensible to ourselves and our limited means of understanding. Fortunately we are also
gifted with the faculty of reason, and by reason we can grasp the incomparibility of God and realize that ultimately the means by which we concieve of
God are not Absolute and cannot actually fully describe It... simply because It is indescribable.
Now, each religion has things it can tell you about God... but even describe God as both Just and Merciful are abstractions rather than things you can
concretely relate to, and in order to do so we must imagine about God's Justice and Its Mercy and we can only do so in our own human experience of
justice and mercy. Reason should tells us that we can't really even comprehend those two qualities on a cosmic scale... let alone a beyond cosmic
scale.
In a sense, no religion is necessarily "wrong" except perhaps something like Scientology which is obvious the product of a scamming science fiction
writer's imagination.
|
|
|
tireironsaint
* BANNED *
Posts: 4299
Registered: 5-14-2003
Location: Colorado
Member Is Offline
Mood: Beltones
|
|
Siczine, I don't know who the fuck you've been talking to about atheism, but you've got a warped sense of what it's about. It's honestly NOT about
"hating on" religion at all. Yes, a good number of people who consider themselves atheists have issues with aspects of organized religion, but anyone
who can objectively look at those aspects of organized religion should be able to understand those issues. A good example of that is this thread.
Obviously, christianity has adopted a huge number of ideas and traditions from other religions and used them to gain followers in a deceptive manner.
If something that is supposed to be pure and true is willing to stoop to such underhandedness, why should anyone be willing to give complete faith
over to it?
As far as the proving or disproving god thing goes, atheists believe only in things that can be proven scientifically and as of yet, there isn't a
shred of evidence that supports the theory of a "supreme being" or "creator", if you prefer. No, it can't be definitively disproven but should we
believe in everything that somebody dreams up just because we have no proof that it doesn't exist? If we head down that road then we should all live
in fear of trolls and goblins and thank fairies and whatnot for our good fortune.
Veritas odium parit
|
|
|
DaveMoral
Posting Freak
Posts: 4334
Registered: 1-24-2006
Location: Ardmore PA
Member Is Offline
|
|
I think the thing with atheism all hinges on what to you consider to be reality... the material universe, or is there something underlying reality?
|
|
|
clevohardcore
* Kick\'n ass on the wild side *
Posts: 12937
Registered: 9-19-2004
Member Is Offline
Mood: Sick Of It All, Youth Of Today
|
|
Wait, Santas not real?
Each aspect of the soul has it's own part to play, but the ideal is harmonious agreement with reason and control.
|
|
|
Siczine.com
Posting Freak
Posts: 2351
Registered: 9-6-2005
Location: Philly
Member Is Offline
Mood: Cynical
|
|
| Quote: | Originally posted by tireironsaint
Siczine, I don't know who the fuck you've been talking to about atheism, but you've got a warped sense of what it's about. It's honestly NOT about
"hating on" religion at all. Yes, a good number of people who consider themselves atheists have issues with aspects of organized religion, but anyone
who can objectively look at those aspects of organized religion should be able to understand those issues. A good example of that is this thread.
Obviously, christianity has adopted a huge number of ideas and traditions from other religions and used them to gain followers in a deceptive manner.
If something that is supposed to be pure and true is willing to stoop to such underhandedness, why should anyone be willing to give complete faith
over to it?
As far as the proving or disproving god thing goes, atheists believe only in things that can be proven scientifically and as of yet, there isn't a
shred of evidence that supports the theory of a "supreme being" or "creator", if you prefer. No, it can't be definitively disproven but should we
believe in everything that somebody dreams up just because we have no proof that it doesn't exist? If we head down that road then we should all live
in fear of trolls and goblins and thank fairies and whatnot for our good fortune. |
Your response does not change my opinion and really only solidifies it. What did I say was so off base that warranted your lengthy reasoning of what
I said is wrong? Atheist believe there is no god, but how can you say there is no god, which you even said, you can't. From my dealings with atheist
they have such disdain for Christian or Muslim beliefs yet won't admit that they themselves are not that different and atheists themselves ARE A
RELIGION. They are all religions and all try to act like they know more than the next. Just the fact atheists claim there is no god is the SAME
THING as a religion that says what god is or could be.
It's seem from my perspective atheists tend to denounce things just to denounce them. They are just on the opposite end of the spectrum from
religions that believe in a god. It also seems that most "atheists" are the most ill informed of what their religion actually is. It seems many of
them would fall under the term of agnostic.
So yes, atheist make as much sense as any other religion.
Take a chill pill there tireironsaint.
 |
|
|
upyerbum
Posting Freak
Posts: 3226
Registered: 10-14-2005
Location: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Member Is Offline
Mood: Condemned 84
|
|
I'm a Gnostic/Dualist. So is everyone else, they just don't realize it. The fact of the matter is most people are only interested in easy answers,
which in turn gives those willing to take advantage of a belief system power over them...blah, blah, blah.
Oh, and Clevo, Santa is real.
Well, its this place where nobody works, and the pigs don\'t give you any shit. Everyone smokes weed and gets drunk all day. Its a place where
cunts like me and you can truly take it easy and relax. Know what I mean?
|
|
|
JawnDiablo
Posting Freak
Posts: 12139
Registered: 4-21-2005
Location: 1902666
Member Is Offline
|
|
| Quote: | Originally posted by clevohardcore
Wait, Santas not real? |
Santa's fuckin real holmes, as I live and breathe
I'll send you his receipts for this season....
|
|
|
| Pages:
1
2
3
..
5 |
![[*]](images/thorp/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
