Tom Cecil and Thomas talk about Cecil’s marriage with a believer, as well as the normal plethora of tangents and sidetracks.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:32 — 15.8MB)
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Tom Cecil and Thomas talk about Cecil’s marriage with a believer, as well as the normal plethora of tangents and sidetracks.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:32 — 15.8MB)
Subscribe: RSS
When a former believer leaves their church, it is extremely traumatic, on various levels. I want to suggest to you that it may be better for some atheists or agnostics to continue attending a church than to leave. I became an agnostic atheist about 5 years ago, I’m not completely closed to the possibility of a deist God, but reject that the Bible is a holy book giving us divine infallible truth. Anyway, I married a Christian woman and my family and her family are all professing, church attending Christians. When I first began to seriously doubt my beliefs, I thought about quitting church, but I decided that the cost was too high. I felt that I was better off keeping it quiet, but going on as that “nominal” kind of Christian. There are some problems with this approach though, because invariably, you will be asked to participate in church activities or leadership roles where you might feel very uncomfortable. For example, I could never be an elder and teach things I don’t agree with. Yet, I have no problem with just being a deacon and serving people in the community and even doing an occasional prayer. The other issue is with how to raise your children as skeptical and free-thinking, but still be part of a community and part of your religious family. Consider what are the options? There is no Unitarian church or other community in our area. Therefore, I don’t feel I am hypocritical to stay in our church despite what I believe.
I enjoyed hearing you talk about your introversion and about having a hard time getting past people’s beliefs just to make friends. I was brought up being told you weren’t a decent person unless you were friends with everyone, and I hated it. When I decided to only go out of my way to be friends with the people I liked and cared about as an adult, I felt so much guilt at first that it was affecting my ability to live my life. It’s good to hear there are more people out there who feel the same way.
My wife was a church going mormon when we got together. After some initial awkwardness where she took me to a meeting with some missionaries and I made snarky comments durning church services there was an unspoken agreement that religion would not be discussed.
She no longer attends church but I don’t think it was a big deal for her, she has always been a pragmatic “I’ve got other shit to do” sort of person really. We’ve been married for about the same amount of time as Cecil.