Wed Jan 17 16:55:57 2024 UTC by CrazyPaya234
On an alt because my brother knows about my main, and I don't want this attention to come towards my parents and make it to my grandparents [somehow]
I never had a relationship with my grandparents from either side of my family. On my father's side, they died before I was born, and on my mother's I barely ever saw them. And when I did, it seemed as though they had no intensions of speaking or interacting with me. I was at home for the longer weekend because my parents needed help cleaning out the attic, and in one of the old boxes there was a old picture of my grandmother and my mom when she was younger. The picture got me thinking about why my mother's grandparents always had acted so strange around me, as if they were avoiding me entirely. I brought the subject up to my mother while we were cleaning up the attic, and she told me why. She told me that my grandparents had always been hyper-religious, specifically catholic. This came as no surprise as I had deduced such from various mannerisms they had shown in the little time I had meet them. She finally said that the reason my grandparents didn't want to be around me was because I was left handed.
WHAT.
She explained further that the left-hand had been interpreted as the devil's hand as a catholic superstition. Because of this, my grandparents had always been wary of me, which grew out to them avoiding having a relationship with me entirely. I'm at a loss for words as to how these insane traditions continue to be prevalent in religious circles, especially in older individuals. It saddens me that despite how Christians often claim to be a welcoming community to all people, that many exclusive and elitist traditions continue to be practiced. I hope as time goes on, we open our eyes to realize how absolutely batshit insane these traditions, and maybe religions as a whole, really are.
Its origins in worshiping the fish god "Dagon" are... interesting to say the least.
But it is by far the only example.
Easter is reputedly (I heard - ofc really who knows) the name of a mesopotamian sun god's wife, where the worshipers would have an orgy with temple priestesses/prostitutes and then the next year do human sacrifices of the babies born from the previous years orgy. Exodus 23:13 be damned (“Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips." emphasis added). Notably, b/c Easter herself was supposedly visited by her dead husband (now the sun god) and in so doing turned a nearby bird into an egg-laying rabbit (or... vice versa? or something?), they would take the blood from the sacrifices and dip eggs into them. To this day the South American celebrations of Easter will only color their eggs red, not pastel as is done in many Western areas... and supposedly they have little idea why - it's just their tradition started sometime in the past and now mostly forgotten.
And the link between Christmas and the yearly winter solstice - worshipping a tree, the date of December 25, etc. - is very well-known.
If even 1/10th of any of this were true, that would be strong support for what you said - a LOT has been added over time. The Bible itself, even the Old Testament, while it does single out left-handedness as being "odd", often presents left-handedness as an ADVANTAGE (or strength and riches), or at least not terribly cursed - e.g. Judges 3:15-21, Judges 20:16 1 Chronicles 12:2, etc. Then again, the "tradition" of Catholicism (which I grew up under) is that people should never read the Bible, b/c we are too dum-dumbz to understand it, and the people should trust the priests to ~~fondle the children~~ explain everything properly.
So yeah, you probably are better off, even if you develop a relationship with them as an adult, to have avoided that indirect indoctrination as a child.
Hmm, what other religion does that remind me of 🤔
but really
Ngl, but I expect there to be stupid atheists one day. I know I know but consider that right now most atheists are "first-generation", i.e. people who put in the effort to do the thinking, really decide what they want, and then stick with it. But give it a hundred years, and people will inherit that the same as any other belief system (other examples: "America is a first-world nation, and we should defend ~~Putin~~ our country to the death (by genociding anyone who disagrees with ~~me~~ me).") that is accepted unconditionally.
That thought somewhat gives me compassion: that humans are stupid. Not all, but most it seems - or at least *I* am:-P. Then again, some of us aspire to more, and question EVERYTHING, and to the extent we follow that, we have many chances to improve on a daily basis.
Unlike "religion", where often you aren't allowed to question anything at all, despite the literal, exact, and direct quote from the Bible not just casually suggesting but COMMANDING precisely that (e.g. I Thessalonians 5:21). Even Jesus hated religion - calling the religious hypocrites (Karens) "vipers" and "white-washed tombs, nice to look at on the outside but full of rot & decay on the inside".
Not that most Christians would be aware of that - what the Bible or Jesus said I mean - b/c the rich old white men would rather that they not actually read, just blindly obey.:-(