51. Sherri Shepherd needs to go away now

Comment #94749 by home8896 on December 6, 2007 at 12:29 pm

I've heard from public school educated people that they truly believe nothing came before Christianity and that Christianity is a science (that definition of "science" must be very interesting) and the Bible is the definitive science authority. One in particular had been brought up with this, and her husband was a pastor. Trying to tell her otherwise was like talking to a brick wall. No matter what the schools teach, adults are teaching their kids to ignore it in favor of what these parents and the church leaders tell them. I could merely gape at her every time she let loose with such odd misinformation.

52. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92000 by home8896 on November 29, 2007 at 5:07 pm

In theory, yeah, so we can love more than one at a time. But first, he had the relationship, while I am merely the brood mare, tending our one year old son, with no time to go hunting for someone else to love while his eyes are all aglaze over some other woman, who was new and exciting - something a Mama of a one year old is not very good at being, me especially, since lack of sleep is not a good state for me. And individually, there are deep abandonment issues. So saying that free love like this is the ideal situation for everyone is a little naive. It is too wide a generalization.

Plus the fact remains, that even had I said, "Oh, that's nice honey," and then decided to see if I could get in on something new and more exciting, he would not have been able to reciprocate the "Oh, that's wonderful dear" theme.

In practice, we are humans with very different levels of tolerance for this sort of thing.

Sure, I don't want my kids to grow up thinking the Disney "happily ever after" thing is realistic. I would like them to be free to do what they want without unrealistic expectations. But as I said, individually, I would prefer serial monogamory, and not polyamory.

The level of desertion I felt when he found something more exciting outweighed the fact that he still loved me. And trust me, I got shit on because I wanted to end the marriage when he didn't because sure, he still loved me. Maybe there would have been something for us had I felt safe enough to venture out there for myself and found a new relationship alongside ours. But no, I know full well that he'd have blown up in a rage I've not yet seen. I have wondered what could have been if he hadn't broken into my account and had friends hack private journals to investigate me to see if I was cheating on him...

I don't think polyamory is for everyone anymore than monoamory...

53. GOD VS. SCIENCE: A Debate Between Natalie Angier and David Sloan Wilson

Comment #91982 by home8896 on November 29, 2007 at 4:41 pm

Sheesh, I have trouble reading past the word "evolutionist" whenever I come across it. I do wonder if it didn't have the "uh-nist" sounds if people would have adopted it so readily. I can't help but feel these people that adopt it so easily feel that it can be related to Satanist when used. I can't take anyone who uses "evolutionist" seriously.

54. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #91975 by home8896 on November 29, 2007 at 4:21 pm

And perhaps if he'd have chosen a less stereotypical kind of cheating to go after, that paragraph wouldn't be eating away at me quite so much. "Horrible wife" and "he was well rid of her" echo some sentiments from certain friends in my stbx's circle. And I just can't get past that - though in his circle of friends, if I had been the one to go looking for someone new with that kind of deception, I would have been accused of all the usual "whore" and "harlot" sort of crap. So, perhaps Richard would feel the same if this was reversed, and it was the wife cheating and the man had her investigated, but the double-standard is pretty deep. I can guarantee that had I found someone new instead, that my husband wouldn't have gone to counseling with me to try to work through it. The jealousy is even worse for him. There are so many thoughts I've had on this subject ever since my mom tried hard to instill in me her Heinlein worldview and yet I still managed hope our relationship was stable enough to survive without wandering out of our relationship for something new...

I'm with SilentMike here. Have threesomes and foursomes to your heart's content, it's your business. But the judgmental note here about this woman rejecting the deception and calling her "horrible" was just as wrong. It's not my business to say how many partners people can have. I've seen poly work and I've seen it fail horribly, but I know that it isn't for me. I may not have really thought we'd be together for eternity, but I also would have expected to be told that he was moving on, instead of finding out a much more difficult way. I tend to believe in a steady monogamous relationship at a time, for myself and my partner - without maybe the clause that it MUST last for our entire lives. Just some devotion while we're together.

If it doesn't work, that's one thing, but to deceive and nurture a new relationship without leaving the old one... I think that's just wrong.

55. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #91947 by home8896 on November 29, 2007 at 3:42 pm

I wouldn't go so far as to say he's endorsing broken promises and cheating, but he is minimizing with the story that was in the news. As if she should have just sucked it up and kept her mouth shut. I don't think going the opposite way and being vindictive is better, though. No, I would just like to make it clear that I feel the wife had a right to feel her hurt and not to just put up with deception, lies and being shoved to a backburner for a different woman. Polyamory seems like such an ideal thing, but I felt physically sick for a long time when I read my husband's blog to the world that he wished he could have a relationship with the other woman. And yeah, maybe I am insecure, but damn, it still hurt.

It was this paragraph, in particular, that I took most issue with:

"In one of the most disgusting stories to hit the British newspapers last year, the wife of a well-known television personality, Chris Tarrant, hired a private detective to spy on him. The detective reported evidence of adultery and Tarrant's wife divorced him, in unusually vicious style. But what shocked me was the way public opinion sided with Tarrant's horrible wife. Far from despising, as I do, anybody who would stoop so low as to hire a detective for such a purpose, large numbers of people, including even Mr. Tarrant himself, seemed to think she was fully justified. Far from concluding, as I would, that he was well rid of her, he was covered with contrition and his unfortunate mistress was ejected, covered with odium. The explanation of all these anomalous behavior patterns is the ingrained assumption of the deep rightness and appropriateness of sexual jealousy. It is manifest all the way from Othello to the French "crime passionnel" law, down to the "love rat" language of tabloid newspapers."

56. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #91930 by home8896 on November 29, 2007 at 3:09 pm

For me, in leaving my marriage because of what amounts to an emotional affair, it wasn't just jealousy. All his energies were completely stripped from us, his family, and devoted to someone else. There is also a pattern of deception that I'm unravelling, that covers financial as well as emotional areas of our life. If one can be honest and open and actually rise above the natural sexual jealousy, by all means, go for it. I am not there, yet. It hurt to be thrown off for someone new, and the rejection is still a sore spot. Therefore, this article is not one of my favorites I've seen from Richard.

57. Face to faith

Comment #82888 by home8896 on October 28, 2007 at 6:30 am

Sheesh, even without incredibly deep understanding of mathematics and theoretical science, and without a need for magic and fairies, I can see and sense great awe for the universe. Going out for a walk through the woods and investigating things I see without a textbook to guide me through it - or a strange faith in imaginary things - brings me great feelings of wonder and joy to be part of this huge universe.

I think even we "commoners" are quite capable of seeing more than the dull confines of life. I don't need Angels and Fairies and I really can't grasp higher maths, but I still feel the awe.

58. I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist

Comment #81879 by home8896 on October 25, 2007 at 10:36 am

Comment # 14 by oisha is exactly what I hear when I hear this lament by some of my friends. I have one very good friend who cannot let go of faith completely because she is terrified of Hell. To her, this place could be real. To me, it is a ridiculous idea. Indoctrination turns into something very real to the person who is stuck in a Pascal's Wager mindset. Even pointing out the other religions that are here now or other religions that have come and gone cannot uproot the terror of this childhood vision of Hell for many people. And watching The Root of All Evil where Dawkins visits Hell House, this is exactly what the church leaders are trying to do. Scare the Hell out of children to save them from going there.

In this way, I do really think these people feel they'd have to be faithfully confident that this torture for eternity is just a really dumb story, but how do we help them let go of the fear? My friend has heard from her peers, family, and all those who love her very much that they don't want her or her children to go to hell. It would take usurping that very strong vision of hell as being just a story to get past this "not enough faith to be an atheist" argument.

I haven't succeeded in helping her break from this bondage, even though she admits she thinks the bible is crap and that many rituals she's seen are really dumb. The issue of confronting this image of Hell is very real around these parts. And it isn't easy to get past the emotion behind it. I just keep repeating there is no faith for me and that I cannot relate to the idea of having faith in anything without evidence from many sources of empirically verifiable things, and not just what a whole lot of people said to me from birth.

59. 1996 Richard Dimbleby Lecture

Comment #73004 by home8896 on September 23, 2007 at 6:32 pm

Very good. I would love to have a science appreciation class to take. I can't say any of my science teachers did much to improve my image of science as being much more than something only the mathematically inclined would ever understand, which left me unable to sense the great wonder in any of it. Really was a shame that science was kept as stringently un-wondrous as possible.

Oh, and I too thought that was a bit harsh about X Files, but the lecture was before the last episode which pretty much threw everything else out the window with a very pragmatic explanation for the biggest mystery of the show. Seems even the writers needed to have us all come back to reality before concluding it. Although I was a bit annoyed that the rational voice of the show still had religious convictions, and the skeptic of religion was so easily conned into other woo woo. I still liked the show, anyway.

60. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #72124 by home8896 on September 20, 2007 at 11:49 am

How does one even identify the difference between God and Straw God? This Straw God is easy to demolish because no one really knows that this isn't actually God, except by indoctrination. Certainly not by evidence.

The article speaks to an audience that probably read only the online articles - knowing that most people didn't bother reading either TGD or the rebuttals themselves. It speaks to an audience that won't listen to the reasons given for disbelief and this audience doesn't want to know that there might actually be reasons to disbelieve. That audience wants to be patted on the head and told to go back to their pretend game of knowing the unknowable.