B.i.t.e. Me

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

The hostility is really uncalled for. I'm not clear cut on what you're so angry about? I think you're misreading my statements, and that's fine. If you don't like the thread, feel free to ignore it. You can demarcate your experiences however you like, I'm just using a different standard then you are. I find the dictionary definition to hold less gray areas, and to be more universally applicable. I don't think anyone should be lied to, ever, for any reason. I think it's wrong. I'm not stifling your right to say anything. We can disagree, it's fine. I'm not calling your experience nothing, I'm not labeling others experiences. The end point is, religion is dangerous. Religious dogma is dangerous. There's no need to start a shouting match. Obviously, it's a touchy subject, or we wouldn't all be here. We won't all agree on everything. A friend of mine says, trying to get atheists to agree on anything is like herding cats. Some things, we'll just have to agree to disagree on.

 

 

I've gone through nothing, so there really isn't much of a conflict the way I see it. You, on the other hand have actually gone through hard times. I wouldn't know what that is like. I am sorry for offending you.

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

A pointless post.

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

Another pointless post.

 

Just edited it.

[Amethyst]

Since I've gone through nothing I can't really comment on your experience except to say I am sorry you went through that, and I hope you recover.

 

Quid, I see nobody here claiming that you personally have gone through nothing. I hope you are able to find what you need in order to recover. The internet can only do so much. There are also people in real life who specialize in recovery from religious abuse.

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

Since I've gone through nothing I can't really comment on your experience except to say I am sorry you went through that, and I hope you recover.

 

Quid, I see nobody here claiming that you personally have gone through nothing. I hope you are able to find what you need in order to recover. The internet can only do so much. There are also people in real life who specialize in recovery from religious abuse.

 

 

And I have been through a recovery program administered by people who specialize in recovery from religious abuse that utilized Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and in that recovery setting MMPI-2 testing and Millon-III testing had been administered and I was "diagnosed" with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. After therapy I was told that this C-PTSD was in remission and life would be much easier. This has been the case to a large degree. I would also like to distinguish this by saying that Trauma is an injury and not an "illness" in the conventional sense of the word. So thank you for your "concern".

 

I will end my time in this thread by saying that I respect the OP's post and that I now know better than to voice my opinion.

 

Back to somewhere else.

[Vomit Comet]

It's a matter of semantics. The word "cult" or "religion" is defined by usage, not by the dictionary. That said, I side with QuidEst, in that it is a matter of degree, not the simple fact that one happens to be a member of a "religious community." Yes, a Honda Civic and a Lamborghini are both cars, but they have many differences. Just like how 1st Boston Unitarian is different from Babbling Brook Methodist Faith Center is different from Crawford 1st Baptist is different from some bat-shit snakelickers in West Virginia is different from goddamn motherfucking Charles Manson. And the difference isn't just nominal, it's ordinal. It is a matter of degree, and it gets shittier and shittier as a whole the higher up the ladder of madness you climb.

 

QuidEst's experience was particularly acute. Those of you who say being raised in a typical run-of-the-mill Baptist church is every bit as bad are totally off base, and those of you raised in some wishy-washy namby-pamby Episcopalian church with openly gay deacons had it much easier still. Now, maybe your own experience at Shady Oaks 1st Baptist nearly drove you to suicide, but try to think like a sociologist here. We're talking about aggregates, not anecdotes. Every nth person at Shady Oaks 1st Baptist was headfucked nearly to suicide, and every nth person in QuidEst's former cult was headfucked nearly to suicide. But guess what? The "nth" for the latter is going to be a whole lot lower than for the former. As in, there's going to be a whole lot more 'n' out of 100 that were that badly fucked over to that extreme-ass degree. Understand?

 

Now, you don't have to be in a so-called cult to be as acutely headfucked as QuidEast was. Take Piracy of the Head. He was in a Greek Orthodox monastery. It doesn't get any more orthodox than that (pun intended), and yet he got fucked up in the same way that QuidEst did. Again, it is a matter of degree, and not a matter of what label you give it. A kooky cult, a Greek Orthodox monastery, a particularly bat-shit local congregation within the already bat-shit Assemblies of God denomination. the extraordinary extreme shit that QuidEst and Piracy experienced are far more likely to happen to an individual there than at a non-denominational mega-church in Orange County, or at some pantywaist warm fuzzy liberal church in New Haven, Connecticut.

 

It's just like how you're more likely to have a shitty time being born in Somalia than in Oklahoma. Yes, Oklahoma sucks more than the coast of California (screw you, you know I'm right) or the south of France, and yes, Somalia sucks a lot worse than Oklahoma. And yes, there are well-adjusted people in Somalia who live to ripe old ages with little relative trouble, and there's kids in Pismo Beach who live upper middle class California lifestyles and go surfing four times a week who hang themselves on their 15th birthdays. But god dammit we're talking statistical aggregates here.