"I am well aware that many secular conservatives are convinced that they cannot believe in or practice any religion.
To these people, I say: So what?
Once you realize that America’s future depends on Americans affirming “In God We Trust” just as much as they affirm “Liberty” and “E Pluribus Unum,” you have to work on taking God and some religious expression seriously. You should emulate parents who are tone deaf who nevertheless give their children piano lessons.
“Fake it till you make it” is one of the many great insights of 12-step programs. The rule applies to everything good that does not come naturally.
Find a clergyman who shares your values and regularly take your child (or grandchild) to religious services.
Study the Bible with your child or grandchild on a regular basis. Lincoln rarely attended church, but he read the Bible every day. If you need a rational approach to God and the Bible, I suggest beginning with any of my three volumes of Bible commentary, “The Rational Bible.”
Say a blessing before each meal. Even if you’re secular, that shouldn’t be too difficult.
I promise you that whatever discomfort you experience acting religious pales in comparison to the discomfort you will experience if your child or grandchild ends up woke."
:data-laughing:
Fastest way to alienate your kids from religion is to impose it on them at every opportunity, and especially if you make it explicitly political. That perfect combination of annoying, boring, and viscerally repulsive.
I don't know, everyone I know who was raised by religious helicopter parents is about 50/50. They either become completely estranged from their family and only visit on rare occasions, or they become an even worse more annoying version of their parents. I watched my family get worse over time actually.
I watched it happen throughout four generations to produce three of my cousins. My great-grandmother was a very typical non-denominational protestant born in the 1890s, very modest and old-fashioned, only book she ever read was the Bible. Her daughter was a Methodist whose only social circle revolved around church activities. She was a Nixon voter in 1960, sympathized with the civil rights movement somehow, but never vocalized it because she wanted to outwardly seem traditional/conservative. Her son (my uncle) is a complete chud businessman, also Methodist but the bad kind. Made his children do Bible reading exercises daily, made his three sons all dress the same, made them recite Bible verses in unison. Put them in daily church services and would make them do the pledge of allegiance before bedtime.
Anyway, well, one of my cousins is currently in the Klan. The other one is in a snake handler church cult that openly does conversion ceremonies where they "cure" gay people. That's how that turned out.
Do you mind if I share this the next time I come across someone who thinks that social progress will happen "once the old people die off"?
Yeah, you can edit it too if you want so it reads better or is more succinct. I take garden path sentences sometimes and I'm self-conscious about it.
I like garden path writing and read a lot of it, for what it's worth your sentences didn't feel egregiously meandering to me
I guess more what I meant is you either get alienated from or you dive right all in with no real middle ground
He was a successful businessman and a pastor of a church. He told me that he had three sons, each of whom had doctorates — one from Yale, one from Princeton and one from Stanford. “And they are all leftists,” he sighed.
lol. certainly no conflict in being a successful businessman and a minister :jesus-cleanse:
It is true that religious Jews and Christians were a disappointment during lockdowns. That most rabbis, priests and ministers closed their synagogues and churches in obedience to irrational secular authority is reason for weeping.
chuds are still seething about the half-ass lockdowns that (barely) happened two years ago. about the worst example of "irrational authority"
“And they are all leftists,” he sighed.
All three had chosen the values of the university over religious and conservative values.
Doesn't that prove Prager wrong? The three sons were raised correctly by a conservative Christian businessman and presumably inoculated against the wiles of cultural Marxism or whatever. If university style leftism is so powerful, why don't conservatives just make their own universities? Oh wait, they do, except they're either creationism institutes that are scams to fleece money out of rubes, or they're just Georgetown and produce CIA recruits.
I will never forget a man who cruised with me years ago on one of my annual listener cruises.
Oh, that's why his sons are leftists. This guy sounds like an absolute freak. If my dad went on a cruise ship with Denis Prager I'd probably also disregard anything he said.
i think prager is one of the few chuds to make a distinction. you do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to him though
He makes a distinction but I don't think it's clear if he knows what he's talking about. He might just be playing to a specific audience and saying what they want to hear, because he says fascists are leftists.
He might also make a distinction because a lot of his career has been about how he's a Zionist and he recognizes liberals generally like Israel and leftists don't. Prager is one of the weirdest types of conservatives, he's Jewish and desperately wants to be accepted as an honorary WASP.
the deleted post that made me lol
You really think you’re something huh? Strutting up and down the site like a cartoon dictator. Your insolence and sanctimonious self-righteousness knows no bounds. You’re a real fucking genius, huh? Glory be to UlyssesT, the holy moral authority of Hexbear Dot Net. You’re almost like the Confucius of Hexbear - trite bullshit disguised as sage wisdom and mindlessly quoted and repeated by the rest of the braindead tailist flock. Your “morality” is nothing more than a Nazi kangaroo court, you fascist fuck. You think you’re a philosopher? You’re nothing more than a Confucian-Hitlerian manchild.
.
you know, I thought I'd be the one having this line, or something similar, said to by some frothing dweeb but being in the observer seat for once and seeing this from the outside in is extremely entertaining. From now on, I declare you as my sworn hexbear brother.
:jesse-wtf: I have literally no context for whatever argument the two of you are having so this just reads like an utterly deranged bit
Edit: it got removed :bawllin-sad:
for anyone interested here’s the full message before it got deleted, it’s pretty funny
You really think you’re something huh? Strutting up and down the site like a cartoon dictator. Your insolence and sanctimonious self-righteousness knows no bounds. You’re a real fucking genius, huh? Glory be to UlyssesT, the holy moral authority of Hexbear Dot Net. You’re almost like the Confucius of Hexbear - trite bullshit disguised as sage wisdom and mindlessly quoted and repeated by the rest of the braindead tailist flock. Your “morality” is nothing more than a Nazi kangaroo court, you fascist fuck. You think you’re a philosopher? You’re nothing more than a Confucian-Hitlerian manchild.
Wow, it reads like a bit, but I think it's pretending to be one of my alts. You can tell because they're using the "kangaroo court" bit. It's a Jordan Peterson rant reference. This is why the CTH podcast hosts had to denounce the sub publicly - these people are kind of fucked up deep down.
I say a blessing before every meal. I do it silently and it goes like this: "Thanks be to the workers who made this meal possible. Thanks be to the farmers who grow our food."
Even if you believe the whole world was built and ordained by god I think you are doing a disservice to your fellow humans if you do not acknowledge the labor that went into it. If you thank a mechanic for fixing your radiator you can thank labor for your food at the dinner table.
Personally I like to begin every meal with a meditation on how the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of our minds to properly correlate their contents, and how we live on a placid isle of ignorance amidst the black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
rip to your psyche but mine is out voyaging out into the infinite horizon every day and it loves it.
H P Lovecraft was a punk, I could describe cosmic horrors I just choose not to :swole-doge:
HP Lovecraft's idea of an incomprehensible horror was an italian guy, dude was just racist
But all the pasta shapes are incomprehensible and he smelled of an exotic spice called "garlic"
Thanks be to the workers who made this meal possible. Thanks be to the farmers who grow our food
I think I'm going to start doing this.
So many indigenous peoples and non-Christian cultures have a gratitude moment before meals, and I think understanding the labor and care that went into it, including acknowledging and thanking the earth for its bounty is important, regardless of religion.
Me and my trans sister were dragged to church and Sunday School every Sunday by our conservative parents.
Jokes on you, Dennis. Compassionate Christianity is probably the whole reason we're both communist.
And the reason my parents no longer vote for Republicans.
Unironically I think the reason I'm a leftist is because of my "Christian" upbringing. I was raised catholic. but my main religious educators were my mom and grandma and they kinda ignored all the fucked up parts to focus on turning the other cheek and helping poor people. For example, I didn't realize Catholics were supposed to hate gay people until I was practically an adult.
I don't think you need to be religious to be a leftist or anything like that, but it was definitely the path I took.
"Devout Christian who doesn't actually believe in God"characters are always unfathomably evil villains or super based, with no room in between
I promise you that whatever discomfort you experience acting religious pales in comparison to the discomfort you will experience if your child or grandchild ends up woke."
What a bizzare way to lay things out: is attempting to indoctrinate your child and yourself (if you're not religious) really easier than just working on yourself to accept your grandchild? Like even Dennis seems to realize his argument sucks and he's trying his best to paper over it
It's funny that Praeger doesn't think that the children will realize that their parents being religious for a cynical reason
Maybe he feels that he has to fart out an article for his site every few days, and there's really only so many new ways to complain about the same few topics?
Tho I do think he does believe this on some level deep down.
This seems fuckin unhinged.
I expect nothing less from our boy Denny P
Living a lie your entire life to own your hypothetical lib offspring.
discomfort you will experience if your child or grandchild ends up woke
They like to forget that Christianity was originally all about social justice, they just want supply-side Jesus.
'Become religious so your kids don't end up woke' just means that you see religion as a means to an end.
And it's so hollow too because the end is "Don't advocate leftism because Dennis Prager might have less money if you do that"
:geordi-no: Eternal life in paradise in the company of the lords and saints.
:geordi-yes: Scolding the whippersnappers at yet another dreadful family dinner.
Imagine him reading this aloud on a big dystopian screen like Dr Breen
This is why he suggests to "find a clergyman who shares your values" and shills his 3-volume bible commentary. Ofc he exclusively talks about Christianity as in "the ideological superstructure for genociding queer people and bootlicking the capital class", not about Christianity as in :jesus-cleanse: or about values like compassion and pacifism and helping out refugees. Just the tiny subset of Christianity that aligns perfectly with the nazi program of the undead fossil fuel monstrosities that bankroll his filthy propaganda channel.
Hot take but I think reddit got worse after the reddit atheists fizzled out, as obnoxious and cringe as they could be they played a vital part in that ecosystem
This kind of shit does threaten to transform me back into 14 year old TheLepidopterists.
