My wife and I were at our daughter and son in laws place last night to keep an eye on our 2 younger grandkids for a couple of hours. Grammy was in our 6 year old Nora’s bedroom having a tea party, while I was with our grandson racing Hot Wheels cars like we usually do. After a few minutes, Grayson, who’s almost 9 now, asked me what my favorite kind of dinosaur was. I had to think about it for a moment, I haven’t thought about anything like that in probably 60 years.
After telling him it was a triceratops, we started talking about them, and how long ago they had become extinct. It was at this point that my jaw almost hit the floor because he proceeded to tell me that his parents had told him that the earth was only about 6000 years old. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, my daughter is a young earth creationist? Holy shit.
I wanted to correct him, and tell him the truth about what we know about the age of the earth and the universe, but I kept my mouth shut. Later that evening my wife and I were watching something on TV, and after a few minutes I paused the show, and asked her how old she thinks the earth is. She wanted to know why I was asking her the question, so I told her about my conversation with Grayson, that our kids were young earth creationists who believe the world is only 6000 years old, to which she hesitated a bit before saying she believes it’s around 10,000 years old.
How is it possible for any intelligent, fully developed adult to simply ignore the mountains of scientific knowledge and the history about the origins of the universe, of the earth, and of our species, and believe the stories written by some bronze age “scholars”? Now I know why my wife can’t even be in the same room with me if I’m watching something that’s about the origins of the universe, or anthropology and the origin of our species. This is truly pathetic.
I knew my wife and kids, and now our grandkids were all devout believers, but I never would have thought that they could ever fall into the category of young earth creationists. I wonder if our son and his girls believe this as well, they live about 50 miles north of us, and attend a different church.
I’m not sure if I want to know the answer to that.
Caveat emptor, dude.
You knew she was a fundamentalist theist when you married her. You knew she was raising your children to be fundamentalist theists. You knew your children were teaching fundamentalist theism to your grandchildren.
You went along with it. (Oh, you can say you didn’t, but your silence for all these years equals complicity.)
And now you’re surprised and aghast? Spare me your indignation. It’s not worth the breath used to utter it.
When we got married in 1982, neither one of us was religious, we only had a church wedding because it was what both of our moms wanted. She only started going to church after our son was born in late '83, so I wasn’t fucking going along with anything. She began her campaign to convert me around late '84 or '85.
You really have no fucking clue about my relationship with my wife, our 43rd anniversary is in a couple of weeks. Devout believers, definitely. Young earth creationists, this is something new, and to hear about it from our 8 year old grandson was definitely a surprise.
Why are you so fucking angry anyway?
I think that the answer to this is multi-faceted.
-
Part of it is Stockholm syndrome. I think that kids are much more vulnerable to Stockholm syndrome than adults, and shit like this is fed into them at a very early age.
-
I have come to believe (and please note that I said “believe” and that I did not say “know”) that many organized religions have a lot in common with financial pyramid “Ponzi” schemes. In order to sell the religion, it needs to have its own distinct mythos, it needs to have an enemy to rally against (ie: “Homosexuals are attacking the family,” or “Atheists are in league with Satan” and other similar bullshit).
-
A young Earth creation absolves us of the responsibility to think critically, as critical thinking is hard work. It is easier to blindly believe a minister or pastor than to think on your own.
-
A young Earth creation is comforting, because we don’t have to confront the awful shit in this life if God is going to fix it in paradise later after we die.
This is what I believe, and I hope this helps you.
My ex wife is the same. I’m so glad we divorced. I should have never married at all. But oh well, I was a 20 yr old idiot boy who didn’t think it through 
Shouldn’t have married a religious woman. It was inevitable. They are programmed to brainwash children. I run a mile when I discover any woman who likes me is religious. I make excuses and get the hell out of there. Maybe in a generation or ten some of your descendants will break the spell and wake up. Religion is dying rapidly now anyway.
Compartmentalization has many uses. It produces cognitive dissonance (e.g., discomfort watching science shows that disagree with the dogma) but some people can even overcome that.
Theyre devout believers, it shouldnt be a jaw dropping experience to find out theyre young earth creationists.
I can relate a little bit because my own children talk about God and how he made everything. But they also talk about science and dinosaurs, i was about my daughters age when those two things became obviously contradictory to me but she hasnt mentioned anything yet.
Im glad she hasnt tbh, when i was young i was way too pre occupied with God, death and morbid thoughts and philosphical questions, it really distracted me from real world practical issues.
It might be a contraversial thing to say that i dont want my kids thinking about the deeper questions in life, i do to some extent but theres only so many hours in a day.
Being young earth creationists might have some practical drawbacks, depending on what kind of area theyre from theyll probably get it taught out of them in school or by other kids anyway.
Not only is it hard, but normally it also requires being exposed to thoughts that are in opposition to your currently accepted ideas. If you live and breathe in an intellectual monocultural environment that is closed off to all opposition, critical thought is unheard of. Such intellectual singularities would be next to impossible to break out of.
So you didn’t know back then that she was going to drink the Kool aid.
This is just something that blew up in your face. Happened to me too with my first ex wife after we had kids. I’m glad that’s over. She knew I was an atheist & later made many attempts to convert me. I feel for you. Sounds like you’re sick of it. Have you considered divorce?
Just asking because I think you’re really unhappy. This woman has been rude to you & has deprived you of your role as a man in your marriage. Just putting that out there because you bring it up a lot.Just the way you describe it, it sounds like it fell apart for you a long time ago. Hell, she gave you an ultimatum to get rid of your cat. I would have taken the cat & left.
You might be happier without her.
Yep, don’t hitch your wagon to someone who believes in magic.
I’ve pretty much given up on dating where I live. Most of the girls are Christian. I’d rather not hand cuff myself to another religious moron.
As the years have gone by, and my own views have changed from Christian to careful non-believer to very atheist, I am very happy that my wife’s view has been (and still is) even more anti-religion than mine. And she has a unique combination of live-and-let-live and no-bullshit attitude that surpasses mine. No wonder I find her attractive.
He’s a narcissist and this is his stomping ground.
You can tell by lack of empathy and the assumptions.
Welcome to the show.
How is he a narcissist?
What the fuck are you talking about? Your opinions mean less than nothing being you’re a believer in your imaginary friend in the sky. How/why do you conclude that I’m a narcissist, you know nothing about me.
its 2025; everyone is a narcissist now! 
How is he a narcissist if he didn’t even tell his grandkids anything about how incorrect their beliefs were on the Earth only being a few thousand years old? Did you even read his story before making your “assumptions”?
Before throwing around adjectives characterising a person, it is good form to understand what the word means before using it. I can think of several people where this adjective is appropriate, but the suggested individual here is not on my list. Nor do I see a clear correlation with the dictionary definition of the word.
That’s one (fairly limited) sense of the word and ironically the aspect one would be least able to apply without visual feedback.
More broadly it’s just pathological selfishness if you want to reduce it to a single phrase. And that is not much easier to make an armchair “diagnosis” out of and not something that would have occurred to me in this case either.
I think it’s fair to say it’s dismissible as a weak ad hominem assault.