WORLD INFORMATIONS: Family might listen? Follow up to a post I made earlier: I posted about my family’s (and most mormons’) position that 10-12 is too young to credibly be atheist but 8 is old enough to claim and commit to a whole-hearted belief in a complex supernatural ideology. That was on my mind because my brother’s wife texted an invitation to their youngest son’s baptism. I thought for days about how to handle that. I wasn’t going, that was pretty easy. I don’t condone anything feeding that machine and can’t justify even casually supporting it. Think of it this way: if I was in the KKK and invited them to a ceremony in which my son was going to give his first racist speech, I hope to all the gods they would decline the invite. The Mormon church may be worse than the KKK in some ways, so yeah, definitely not going. But how to respond, if I should at all. Finally decided to send a text, I’ll just copy it directly: “Hey! Didn’t want to just leave you hanging on the invite, but also don’t want to be dodgy or misleading about why we’re not going, and saying we can’t make it wouldn’t really be true, and just saying we won’t be there feels passive aggressive or something. We love you guys but can’t support an entity like that church. If you ever want to talk about it, I’d love to.“ They know I don’t believe, but we’ve never really talked about it directly. I was a little worried about the response, even though these are honestly some of the most genuinely good people I know, and have never been judgmental of me, even when virtually everyone else, including the rest of my family, was. The response was great. My brother said “I’m disappointed you won’t be there, but I appreciate your honesty and would love to talk about the church in person.” Then invited me to dinner with everyone afterward. After dinner, my sister in law hugged me and thanked me for the text. She said she really would like to talk to me, and said that she had talked to her brother (a friend of mine who left the church long ago) about his experiences and beliefs, and that it really helped their relationship. It’s hard to explain, but you know how almost everything Mormons do is at least potentially underhanded? Like in this case, is this just them believing god is opening up an opportunity for then to “bring me back” or something? But it wasn’t. For mormons, they are amazingly progressive and non-judgmental. And I know she just actually wants to hear me out. I don’t have a lot of hope that anything I say will change the path they’re on or convince them to stop feeding one of the most evil entities on the planet, but you never know. I didn’t think any of my TBM fam would ever even want to discuss the church with me, knowing that I don’t believe (and that I like to debate, and am pretty good st it). Anyway, it was a little potentially uplifting news. I’ll post something if/when I talk to them.