Is anyone else an atheist with BC besides me?

ananda, that little essay is beautiful.

As well as being a physicist, Aaron Freeman is a writer and stand up comedian. Here is his response to the question of god:

Beliefs
In circa 2013, Freeman, in response to a query by Deborah Mitchell, who devoted a chapter of her book Growing Up Godless (2014) to his eulogy, about if he believes in god, responded with the following comedic like agnostic or polite atheist's creed (see: atheist's creed):

"I believe in Nike, goddess of victory; Anapurna, goddess of food; Sophia, of wisdom, Shango, of the sky; and absolutely in Dionysus, of wine making and theater!"

I have always loved the goddesses, perhaps in defiance to patriarchy or just in good humour, so this amused me.

It is a blessing of life to have a close beloved friend, and it is terrible to lose them.

By the way please allow me to use the F word about anyone who would blame her atheism for cancer. That's not only irrational, it's disgusting.

You are a good friend, to shelter Bella. I am sure she was a good friend too. The devotion of her grandchildren shows what kind of person she was. I am glad you get to go do something fun and life affirming with your niece.

hahaha good you had solidarity

Wander...totally agree!

Yesterday in NYTimes there was an article on what to say and not say to someone grieving.

What to say and not say

Yesterday my SIL used the expression 'as least' many times as she describes her friends experience with her husband having a stroke. At least it wasn't A, At least it wasn't B. Sadly, nothing about how her friend really felt.

It seems to me the key in what to say is about hearing what the grieving person feels and not how to make yourself feel better and feel distanced from the grief.

I think the kindest thing to say to someone whose loved one has a serious health event is 'I'm sorry. How are you doing?' Followed by, 'how can I help?' I know from spending 10 days at the hospital with DH that the offer to water the garden was gratefully accepted. I just couldn't get home early enough to fit it in.

kber, I could not agree more. Put a note on your door saying "knock softly and if I don't come to the door, I am sleeping." You can leave a bucket of water on your porch too!

I told one of my oldest and dearest friends, when she offered to visit, "You are a good enough friend that I can tell you the truth... please don't come... wait till I'm feeling better, when I can enjoy you."

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/152/topic...

I had written something similar in this post... A Cancer Patient's Bill of Rights" ... nobody seemed to pick up on it but I think there must be other "rights" people have in mind!

i didn't understand. Bucket of water?

and they can put their flowers in it and GO!

Wren - I agree and would add that specific offers of help are best. I know that when people asked me how they could help when I was in the midst of treatment, I was flummoxed. But if they said they wanted to drop off a meal for me or give me a ride to an appointment, I gratefully accepted.

I'd love to see a randomized double blind clinical trial offering treatment vs prayer. Nobody would join!!

Yes, there will always be outliers.... Remember, some outliers get conventional treatment for stage 4 diagnoses, and remain NED for decades. Outliers are not what we base rational decisions on. The bell curve is real. By the same token, you can have a super treatable stage one, get treatment, and progress anyhow.

OTOH, there are therapies that are not conventional that have decent stats behind them, and there may be people who squeak through without conventional therapy using those. High dose Vitamin C for example, which has efficacy against cancer. Or there are the people who do nothing (say a stage 0, grade one, tiny tumor) and whose bodies or immune systems take care of the cancer on their own. (Scans are now picking up cancers that would have self healed and never been picked up 10 years ago.) Say you have one of those dinky, slow tiny cancers, and you pray.... you could attribute the disappearance to prayer when it's your plain old immune system!

If prayer were reliable, there would not be so many Christian posters on this site who progress or die.

To add to what santabarbarian says: We FORTUNATELY live in a rather new era of Evidence-Based Medicine. For the first time, data-sets and a body of research can be mined to give statistical probability outcomes. These can inform treatment. Of course there are outliers in all statistical probability treatment decisions. No guarantees, and as we all know, doing all the 'right things' healthwise is not a guarantee. Nor is treatment always effective. And there are spontaneous remissions; bodies have very unique immune systems. My MO says that we just don't know all of the environmental and genetic and immune system things that affect cancer's emergence and its progression.

But OMg. If we ascribe credit for a cure to a deity, then this omnipotent higher power also must inflict harm willfully, create suffering, and the same logic should assign blame to a deity for all evil, psychopaths, murder, torturers.... Did this god also plan the Holocaust and does he/she also purposely allow childhood trauma? Does this god choose to give me a good day and you a bad day, every single day, like a puppeteer? This stuff really rankles me. When people are 'blessed' when happy things happen, and 'the Lord' is making all the good times occur, what about when unimaginable tragedies occur? Did 'the Lord' decide to randomly inflict trauma and harm? ARRGGHH.

Prayer and belonging and meditating and connecting with others has some positive attributes. Lots of neuroscience and anthropology research explains why humans love bonds and belonging (to a church, to a group, to a clan, to a club, to a team, to an online breast-cancer support group ), and how being in a group satisfies a lot of innately-evolved needs. Teamwork and social interaction has been essential to the development of human societies. Churches are an example of a group of people helping each other, sometimes positively. And they're also an example of how a system can devolve into one of persecution for some and power for others, as is the case for lots of human groups.

But, let's add science and reason to the mix, in 2019.

I know someone who actually said to his wife that their toddler didn't need that booster seat; she must not have enough faith in The Lord, who would protect their child. This is an example of the idiocy of that brainwashing. And, my sister divorced that husband.

Hahaha that's a good cartoon!