re: #69 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

Yikes. Another day at Reddit’s r/Atheism, another family disowns their child (and grandchildren) for his lack-of-faith and refusing to teach their religion to his kids without also teaching about other religions as well. Fortunately this child is an adult and not dependent on his parents any more.

That’s what the poster at Twitter was referring to when the president of Students for Life made her post about God being above Family.

That is an unfortunate and daily occurrence over at Reddit (which is part of the reason the subreddit exists). It isn’t some rare random thing in the USA. LGBT+ and atheist are the two most common reason parents throw away their children.

The r/Atheism FAQ cautions people that before “coming out of the closet” they must consider their financial resources. If they are a child, or an adult dependent on a religious person, the situation will get very bad very quickly. In that case it’s better to “go along to get along” (lie) until you are financially stable and away from home.

There used to be a lot of videos of Christian or Muslim parents destroying the property of atheist children or throwing them out of their homes, before YouTube banned them all as “hate speech against religions.”

Told my mom we were atheist and she lost it. In front of kids.

That also exists in the subreddit r/Epilepsy (children accused of demon possession or thrown away by parents or disowned). Interestingly, about 4% of people with epilepsy report religious experiences after a seizure.

Spirituality and religion in epilepsy (PubMed, January 2, 2008)

Abstract:

Revered in some cultures but persecuted by most others, epilepsy patients have, throughout history, been linked with the divine, demonic, and supernatural. Clinical observations during the past 150 years support an association between religious experiences during (ictal), after (postictal), and in between (interictal) seizures. In addition, epileptic seizures may increase, alter, or decrease religious experience especially in a small group of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Literature surveys have revealed that between .4% and 3.1% of partial epilepsy patients had ictal religious experiences; higher frequencies are found in systematic questionnaires versus spontaneous patient reports. Religious premonitory symptoms or auras were reported by 3.9% of epilepsy patients. Among patients with ictal religious experiences, there is a predominance of patients with right TLE.

(more of the abstract and study at the link)

TLE stands for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (seizures arise in the temporal lobes). Fortunately for me, I have left TLE, so I don’t suffer religious experiences as an atheist. /s