Oddly though, the prayers, despite being made for supposed gratitude and reverence to god for his gracious provision of our needs, were invariably perfunctory and rote. “We thank you god for this food that is set before us and for the hands that prepared it [optionally more blather here], Amen.”
Despite this, I once dug into a restaurant meal with my parents long after I’d fallen out of this habit (I must have been, like, 40 years old) and my Dad practically blew a gasket snarling at me about it. If it had been in their home, I’d have remembered. Oops!
This is why I have come to think of evangelical Christianity as essentially a conformity enforcement system. One might express it this way: It’s not important if a smile reaches your eyes – it’s only important that you smile at the appointed time. A strained rictus will do.
The real irony of thanking a deity for your sustenance, for me anyway, is ignoring the number of people that deity would be deliberately letting starve to death every single day, while others eat themselves quite literally to death. Such an entity would not be deserving of thanks, it would be a sadistically cruel monster.
“Stick your fucking food up your arse!” would seem more apropos to me.
Yeah, it’s interesting how the freeze-peach absolutists of the MAGA and similar flavours are very quick to ban expressions that they personally don’t like (I’m looking at you, E. Musk).
As a child i was raised by a not strict Christian household, now my parents are older they are DEVOUT and pray before every meal even if we are in restaurants. Is it wrong I just pretend to pray to keep the peace.
It’s up to you if it’s wrong. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. If someone who identifies as atheist tells you it’s wrong, then they are no different that a religious person telling you that you need to do it.
Exactly. While there certainly is a time and place to stand your ground, be confrontational, and demand that others listen to you, there is also a time and place to be pragmatic, fly under the radar, and avoid confrontations. And there is of course a middle ground. If you want to keep good relations with your parents, it is probably wisest to avoid confrontations. But it is of course completely up to you which of the aforementioned alternatives you choose.
Yes I choose to lay low with my parents because they are old and lack critical thinking skills. I don’t want to cause any negativity. When they pray I just look down and say to myself I’m so thankful I understand truth!
That is understandable, and I respect that. As for me, my slow transformation from someone who believed(*) in the christian god to an atheist was somewhat slowed down by me not wanting to disappoint and possibly negatively affect the health of my now late mother, who suffered from several health related issues.
(*) Actually, in retrospect, I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong - I only belived that I believed. Back then I didn’t have the tools to analyse and process this kind of information.
If that’s your preference and you’re willing, it’s up to you. I pretty much played along myself. I also think my parents kind of had an unspoken “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy … they were willing to mind their own business so long as they weren’t forced to directly notice my non-conforming. It seemed fair enough to me.
Critical in all this, is that I never felt rejected or unloved or shamed. How much of this was because I was missing cues (I lean a bit in the direction of Asperger’s) or because my parents were less controlling than your average fundamentalist, I can never know. Might have been a little of both, combined with all our midwestern reserve and consequent prioritizing of the avoidance of conflict over confronting or trying to resolve anything.
Up to you, my mother is 85, and has long since given up on trying to convert me, and keeping the peace cuts both ways as far as I am concerned. If anyone wants to pray before meals, they can do it while I tuck in…
It’s a tradition carried over from the Talmud. The Talmud (Brakhot 35a) teaches that eating food without saying a brakhah (a blessing) beforehand is like stealing.
“Our Rabbis have taught: It is forbidden to a man to enjoy anything of this world without a benediction, and if anyone enjoys anything of this world without a benediction, he commits sacrilege…” (Brakhot 35a: 26, Babylonian Talmud)
I don’t think the Talmud is particularly unique in this claim. What it boils down to is that the Abrahamic deity has a very fragile ego, the sort of thing channelled for example by Trump (when he said Ukraine shows “zero gratitude” for his attempts to unilaterally disarm them and give their territory over to their assailant) and Vance (in the White House meeting with Zelinsky some months back when he made the false claim that Zelinsky had never even thanked the US for its military aid). Basically if you don’t specifically acknowledge at each and every meal that the particular food in that particular meal is from God, he will be butt-hurt.
I have often wondered how those who actually prepared the food or who earned the $ that bought it feel with all this valor their God always wants to steal. At least in my particular sect it was also common to add, after thanking God for the food, “… and for the hands that prepared it”. I’ll give them that. At least allowing the women-folk to be acknowledged as passive instruments of the deity.
Bit of a temper too by all accounts, somehow a deity that tortures a newborn baby to death, and commits global genocide doesn’t seem to match Godel’s “god-like” being, defined as a being with all positive properties, with the caveat that one does not view acts such as torturing new born babies to death, and global genocide as positive of course.
And as far as the biblical deity goes, he won’t let it fucking go either.
Does this deity take / want credit for the obesity and diabetes pandemics in developed nations, how does it feel about babies starving to death elsewhere I wonder, or should I say how do theists think it feels? I mean if a human tortured a baby to death, I am not sure we’d waste much time seeking ot moral viewpoint on anything after that.
