Jump to content
IGNORED

Alyssa Webster Pregnant Another Bates Grandbaby - MERGED


Seasoner_Of_Life

Recommended Posts

Most of us have read up on this lifestyle and stories from those who left it. The kids have choices only if it is in alignment with their beliefs. They have been brought up to believe only one way is right. I will believe the have choices when one choose something out of the box like dating, wearing pants, cutting hair, being child-free or moving away without marriage and babies on the plate. To us 'outsiders' who were allowed college and normal lives, it seems so restricting. They dont think about the possibility of being left a widow with 12 kids or having a disable husband. Even those who married young in the secular world made decisions and lived normal teen years without parents micromanaging their lives.

How does anyone know they are happy? I am certain there are ones who stay happy with the QF life. Jill seems to be a fit and so does Priscilla Keller Waller. However,you cant use Priscilla Jill or Alyssa Bates as a measuring stick for everyone else. It is like saying look at the caged bird he's happy and singing. It's easy to be happier if you know no other life. I dont think we are trying to be like the Fundies at all on this manner. We are just concerned about the future of these kids with limited choices.

I am glad you read up on it. I was in it, though on the edges, for six years. I know the indoctrination that goes on. I have seen it firsthand and it was tried on me. I was really lucky to have the people trying it be on the outside of my family, not the inside, so I was actually able to look at multiple perspectives in a critical way. Most of us - on any point of belief spectrum- don't get that chance. I acknowledge that. However, even the fact that I was able to be critical had more to do with my own personality and who I was because of plenty of people - Gil Bates and Doug Phillips, for example - make totally different choices when given similar scenarios.

I know that a lot of people really believe this stuff from the inside. When you bring up your children, you are bringing them up to emulate your beliefs, whether that is isolated religious nonsense or free thought or something else completely. There is simply no way around that. Everything you are saying in your post is a value judgment based on your own belief system, which was formed by personal experience, family and whatever core makes you YOU. That is why some of these kids stay and some leave. Those that leave, that question, that move to something else simply can't reconcile who they are with what they are taught. Faith from the Pennington Point family is a great example of that. However, for the majority of these kids, I think I they are perfectly content with their legalism, their hatred and their perverted view of their Jesus. Some may seem more suited than others, but most won't be much different from their families because they are okay with who they are.

I am teaching my children pretty much the opposite world view that these people are teaching theirs. If my son came back to me as a racist, homophobic, gun toting, Jesus spouting Republican, I would not handle it well. I am indoctrinating him with MY doctrine in hopes he turns into a better version of what I think is valuable and correct. Just like everyone else.

I think what the Bates and Phillips and Maxwells and Andersons are doing is crazy. But what saddens me most is not the fact that Anna Duggar is a having a another baby or Alyssa Bates got pregnant too soon, but that they want to force these twisted world views on the rest of us by corrupting religion (which is very important to some people) and our political systems. That is the real danger of these movements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 106
  • Created
  • Last Reply

I am glad you read up on it. I was in it, though on the edges, for six years. I know the indoctrination that goes on. I have seen it firsthand and it was tried on me. I was really lucky to have the people trying it be on the outside of my family, not the inside, so I was actually able to look at multiple perspectives in a critical way. Most of us - on any point of belief spectrum- don't get that chance. I acknowledge that. However, even the fact that I was able to be critical had more to do with my own personality and who I was because of plenty of people - Gil Bates and Doug Phillips, for example - make totally different choices when given similar scenarios.

I know that a lot of people really believe this stuff from the inside. When you bring up your children, you are bringing them up to emulate your beliefs, whether that is isolated religious nonsense or free thought or something else completely. There is simply no way around that. Everything you are saying in your post is a value judgment based on your own belief system, which was formed by personal experience, family and whatever core makes you YOU. That is why some of these kids stay and some leave. Those that leave, that question, that move to something else simply can't reconcile who they are with what they are taught. Faith from the Pennington Point family is a great example of that. However, for the majority of these kids, I think I they are perfectly content with their legalism, their hatred and their perverted view of their Jesus. Some may seem more suited than others, but most won't be much different from their families because they are okay with who they are.

I am teaching my children pretty much the opposite world view that these people are teaching theirs. If my son came back to me as a racist, homophobic, gun toting, Jesus spouting Republican, I would not handle it well. I am indoctrinating him with MY doctrine in hopes he turns into a better version of what I think is valuable and correct. Just like everyone else.

I think what the Bates and Phillips and Maxwells and Andersons are doing is crazy. But what saddens me most is not the fact that Anna Duggar is a having a another baby or Alyssa Bates got pregnant too soon, but that they want to force these twisted world views on the rest of us by corrupting religion (which is very important to some people) and our political systems. That is the real danger of these movements.

:clap: !!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These kind of discussions make me really uncomfortable. By proclaiming this girl must be miserable in her life or heading that way and without choice or agency because she does not live a life many of us would want, we are doing nothing differently than the fundies out there - trying to impose the life and lifestyle we think is best on someone else.

How do you guys know she does not have choices? She does; just not the what YOU consider valid choices. She believes in her god and her religion and seems quite happy with it. Why is it brainwashing? This is her religion and her value system. There is something wrong with religious fundamentalism in my opinion and I like making fun of the people who buy into it. But declaring someone who seems perfectly content with her lifestyle as brainwashed and bereft of choice because they don't view things like you do and they don't look at the world the same way is nothing but a secular fundamentalism.

I don't think religious fundamentalism is good for the world, women, children, men, politics, puppies, flowers or the Baby Jesus. I'd happily pay more taxes to send them to a little island somewhere so that Ted Cruz and John Webster could run their fundy Utopia without evil gayz and smelly feminists and critical thought to muck it all up before they destroy MY America. But the whole "fundy light" conversation along with the attendant issues to which the conversation inevitably leads really makes me roll my eyes.

Laugh at them, pity them, judge them harshly, fear them, shoot down their doctrines, but don't become them.

I don't really agree with you about her having choices, but I totally agree that we can't judge someone else's happiness. Nobody is all happy or all unhappy all the time. Wouldn't it be easy if making all the right choices in life was a guaranteed path to roses and sunshine, and we could tell who was wrong by the degree of their misery? I would love to say that my accomplishments in life and the number of choices I've had along the way mean that I never feel doubt or frustration or sadness. But nobody's life is like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not to mention that my friend s who have fallen away from strict religion all tell me that leaving the fold is a great way to increase freedom and agency and dignity in one's life-- but not a great way to increase security or contentment. If you see happiness as the goal in life, a belief system that promotes certainty over neurotic self-doubt is the likely winner.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am probably overstating in an struggle to work out the issues the conversations bring out in me. I think the crux of what I am getting to is that I think it is a very fine line between discussing this stuff critically and being a secular fundie about it. Make sense? I guarantee you will also hear the opposite from people who discover religion to varying degrees from minimal to fundamental later in life- Jesus/Mohommad/FSM gave them the freedom to make the right choices and be themselves. That is why this is such an individual, complex issue and painting each person with a broad brush fails.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Allie Jane Webster's arrival is fast approaching. Anyone want to do a baby watch thread.

Bonus if Allie is born before Baby Dilly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not to mention that my friend s who have fallen away from strict religion all tell me that leaving the fold is a great way to increase freedom and agency and dignity in one's life-- but not a great way to increase security or contentment. If you see happiness as the goal in life, a belief system that promotes certainty over neurotic self-doubt is the likely winner.

I very much agree with this.

Living in a very strict framework (religious or other) where rules are very clear about what you're supposed and not supposed to do may be (if you stick to it) the perfect path for happiness, or at least for the feeling to be self-accomplished and "in the right place" in life.

I actually think she may be very happy right now. She basically has everything she was supposed to look for: loving husband, good position, baby underway. She has it all. Why should she not be happy? She must think she is very lucky, or rather "very blessed".

Still, I agree that this was not her choice, and this makes me sad.

This was her response to the way she was taught she should live her life. And it leaves out so many other options where she may have flourished as a human being.

She'd better keep happy in this way of life: it may be the perfect world or the perfect trap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.