how do i convince my husband

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2004
how do i convince my husband
1841
Mon, 07-18-2005 - 4:09pm
how do i convince my husband to let me at least job-share so i can take care of our 3 month old dd? he grew up with his mom working & all his friend's moms working. we can afford it if we cut back on some things, but he doesn't want to cut back & just doesn't understand someone wanting to be a stay at home mom...it doesn't help mycause that the grandmothers will babysit. i'm so unhappy about having to go back to work...he wants me to work full time 1 more year & just doesn't get it! i feel like my heart is being ripped from my chest every time i hink about it.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2003
Mon, 08-15-2005 - 4:03pm
I don't consider showering, getting ready for work, etc as *me* time. It isn't something I *choose* to do, but something I must do.

Jay: People are smart, they can handle it.
Kay: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.  Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-04-1997
Mon, 08-15-2005 - 10:19pm
What would a God who is formless, without consciousness, specific presence or personality have to do with the beauty, symmetry, and magnificent order and design of natural world? What's the relationship here? What has one to do with the other? Where's the link? Why is formlessness, lack of consciousness, specific presence or personality "natural"? It doesn't sound like any natural phenomenon I've ever encountered.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 5:54am

"A "natural" God, hunh?"

Yes, a natural God. Why is this concept so difficult to comprehend?

"Did you see him/her/it last Tuesday or something?"

Actually, there is no him/her/it but rather nature in and of itself. And yes I am amazed and humbled by nature on a daily basis. Aren't you?

"Can you verify the existence of this so-called "natural" God/Higher Power of yours?"

Can I verify that nature exists? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I can LOL. Can't you?

"Has he/she/it shown up in a laboratory?"

Yes, I'm fairly sure that nature has shown up, has been observed, and can be tested in the laboratory.

"Because if you can't verify his/her/its existence through natural means, your "natural" God is no less "super-natural" than the God of the Bible."

Why would I need supernatural explanations of the universe, when I already have natural ones?

BTW, you're certainly welcome to believe that a *supernatural being* created nature *for* us and therefore we should rever a supernatural being.

However, I myself believe that *nature* created us and we should therefore rever nature.



iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 6:20am

"The Genesis account sees an underlying orderliness to the creation of the universe. In that, it is not unlike modern science."

I disagree, the Genesis account is clearly quite unlike modern science, as well as, in direct conflict with it. Why?

1. Because Genesis tells us that the universe was created by a supernatural being, where as science tells us that the creation of the universe was a natural phenonmenon.

2. The Genesis account gives a completely inaccurate/unnatural depiction with regards to the order in which the universe was created, where as science gives us a much more accurate/natural depiction of the universe's creation and orderliness.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 6:44am

"Most of your posts imply things *should* revolve around kids."

Are you suggesting that child-led = revolving/centering around kids? If so, why?


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 7:01am

"I needed the separation, physically, from my children while they slept to maintain my sanity."

Is this similar to the physical separation you needed from your children while you WOH to maintain your sanity? May I ask when you had time to be *together/with your children* seeing as you apparently needed physical separation both day and night in order to maintain your sanity?

"It's not normal (or it's indeed very difficult) to be one's own person for 34 years and 2 months, and then all of a sudden have a helpless newborn dependent upon you 24/7."

Yes, actually it *IS* very normal and indeed very difficult at times. What gave youthe impression that paretning was going to be all fun and games?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 7:03am

"Absolutely- I think that most people (anyone who isn't among the Biblical literalist mindset which doesn't even encompass all of Christianity) would agree that the Bible is a collection of stories that, while historically accurate in many areas, are fictional/mythological/allegorical etc. I'm just saying that there is a wide literary berth that encompasses more than just "fiction/non-fiction" and that's where I think you're getting your disagreements from. Not that others are arguing that the Bible is literal truth (although some would argue that point) but that it's not fiction in the sense that it's a simple novel whose intent is exclusively entertainment... "

I would agree with that.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 7:20am

"I suppose I should say that it's not the *only* thing that would constitute homeschooling, but with the addition of other more academic offerings, you could take active parenting, couple it with those academics and there would be no real difference. For example- if Parent A considers a book discussion to be active parenting- that's fine. However, parent B may use that discussion as a part of their homeschooling curriculum. Certainly that act of active parenting/homeschooling doesn't equate to the whole of the experience, but in either event, it's the same thing going on just in different contexts. Make sense? In one case it's 'active parenting', in the other it's an aspect of homeschooling. That was what I was trying to get at."

It's funny but with all this talk about what constitutes homeschooling vs. active parenting vs. formal school, the bottom line is this:

My dd spends approximately 165-175 days in formal school, where as she spends approximately 190-200 days homeschooling. Therefore, I will certainly beg to differ with anyone who tries to say that we aren't homeschooling in addition to sending our dd to formal school. In fact, if you really want to get technical here, I *could* claim that my dd goes to formal school, in addition to being homeschooled LOL.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 7:40am

"What would a God who is formless, without consciousness, specific presence or personality have to do with the beauty, symmetry, and magnificent order and design of natural world? What's the relationship here? What has one to do with the other? Where's the link? Why is formlessness, lack of consciousness, specific presence or personality "natural"? It doesn't sound like any natural phenomenon I've ever encountered."

Here is an article you might find interesting.

The God of Pantheism

by John Burroughs

"The term "religion" is an equivocal and much-abused word, but I am convinced that no man's life is complete without some kind of an emotional experience that may be called religious. Not necessarily so much a definite creed or belief as an attraction and aspiration toward the Infinite, or a feeling of awe and reverence, inspired by the contemplation of this wonderful and mysterious universe, something to lift a man above purely selfish and material ends, and open his soul to influences from the highest heavens of thought.

Religion in some form is as natural to man as are eating and sleeping. The mysteries of life and the wonder and terror of the world in which he finds himself arouse emotions of awe and fear and worship in him as soon as his powers of reflection are born. In man's early history, religion, philosophy, and literature are one. He is, of course, superstitious long before he is scientific; he trembles before the supernatural long before he has mastered the natural.

In our day we read the problem of Nature and God in a new light, the light of science , or of emancipated human reason, and the old myths mean little to us. We accept Nature as we find it, and do not crave the intervention of a God that sits behind and is superior to it. Science kills credulity and superstition, but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the marvelous universe.

It seems to me that there is no other adequate solution to the total problem of life and Nature than what is called "Pantheism", which identifies mind and matter, finite and Infinite, and sees in all these diverse manifestations one absolute being. God becomes the one and only ultimate fact that fills the universe and from which we can no more be estranged than we can be estranged from gravitation.

When we call the power back of all God, it smells of creeds and systems, of superstition, intolerance, persecution; but when we call it Nature, it smells of spring and summer, of green fields and blooming groves, of birds and flowers and sky and stars. I admit that it smells of tornadoes and earthquakes, of disease and death too, but these things make it all the more real to us to conceive of God in terms of universal Nature - a nature God in whom we really live and move and have our being, with whom our relation is as intimate and constant as that of the babe in its mother's womb, or the apple upon the bough. This is the God that science and reason reveal to us - the God we touch with our hands, see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and from whom there is no escape - a God whom we serve and please by works and not by words, whose worship is deeds, and whose justification is in adjusting ourselves to his laws and availing ourselves of his bounty, a God who is indeed from everlasting to everlasting."

- John Burroughs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-16-2005 - 7:48am

Here's another article (written by Albert Einstein) that I thought you might enjoy.

Religion and Science

The following article by Albert Einstein appeared in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4. It has been reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, Inc. 1954, pp 36 - 40. It also appears in Einstein's book The World as I See It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, pp. 24 - 28.

"Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us. Now what are the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death.

Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense I am speaking of a religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.

The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.

The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion.

A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.

It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries.

Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people."

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The following excerpts are taken from Albert Einstein - The Human Side,Selected and Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1979.

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