Thanks to Whom?

Holidays can be a bit tricky when it come to dining with the religious, especially if they pray at the table. Do you bow your heathen head and join in to keep the peace? Do you just sit quietly not bowing until they are done? That’s what I do.
At Thanksgiving the giving of thanks can be a single prayer or you might have a family that like to go around the table saying what you’re thankful for. We used to do this when my kids were growing up. I have since omitted the term “thanks” from our show of appreciation and have started it off as “I am happy to have my family and friends here…”, thus dropping the thanks altogether.
I did this because I just felt the giving thanks was still a prayer. Who would you give thanks to? It still seemed deity driven. So what or how do you handle the holiday feasting? Prayer, no prayer or something else?
MzLee
Happy Thanksgiving!
:cheese:

Holidays can be a bit tricky when it come to dining with the religious, especially if they pray at the table. Do you bow your heathen head and join in to keep the peace? Do you just sit quietly not bowing until they are done? That's what I do. At Thanksgiving the giving of thanks can be a single prayer or you might have a family that like to go around the table saying what you're thankful for. We used to do this when my kids were growing up. I have since omitted the term "thanks" from our show of appreciation and have started it off as "I am happy to have my family and friends here...", thus dropping the thanks altogether. I did this because I just felt the giving thanks was still a prayer. Who would you give thanks to? It still seemed deity driven. So what or how do you handle the holiday feasting? Prayer, no prayer or something else? MzLee Happy Thanksgiving! :cheese:
So Happy Happygiving. Lois
So Happy Happygiving. Lois
Nice! :)

I came across something on On Being.org, written by a 6 year old. Something about thankful for the planet, because without we’d be floating in space, thanks for family, thanks for dirt for growing food.
I don’t have an issue with being thankful for what the universe has happened to leave laying around for me.
But I probably won’t be asked to pray anyway, or give the invocation, or whatever. We just dig in.

You know, you just made me realize that I am going to have Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow with some new friends and their parents, and the prayer thingy may actually be happening.
I agree the thanks part kinda smacks praying. But, then I still say things like thank god, or bless you when someone sneezes. But I think of them as cultural idioms more than acknowledgments of religious devotion. I don’t really feel the need to sweep them from my usage because I am atheist. I guess I just pick the issues that matter to me.

Today my religious father-in-law led Thanksgiving prayer and we all held hands and bowed our heads while he thanked God for everyone coming together and then he thanked Him for me and my family arriving safely before blessing the food and the other standard dinner prayer things. You see, we were in a car accident yesterday as we drove from Virginia to North Carolina. No one was hurt and the car is scratched up pretty badly but I wanted to say after his prayer “Why did God let us get into an accident at all?” I mean, if He was able to prevent us from being hurt why didn’t he just keep the other guy off of the wrong side of the road, you know? Did he think I had $500 too much and an insurance deductible would put me at the right money level?
My point is that I actually said none of that. My only form of protest to the forced prayer is not saying “Amen” at the end (not that anyone notices this). They’re good people and having their heathen son-in-law point out things like this or refusing to join in the prayer would just be rude. I know the prayer is meaningless but they seem to enjoy it so what does it matter to me.

Well Scott, I’m thankful that car didn’t manage to get any further into your lane than it already had. :slight_smile:
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I myself feel ever more squirrelly around prayers to God Almighty - and really have to bit my tongue and let it slide.
But, the giving thanks part - there’s plenty to give thanks for -
and I’m fine with sending my thanks into the ether, or addressing it to providence,
although most of all I like giving thanks to this Earth and the mysteries that made my life and granted me this moment.

My point is that I actually said none of that. My only form of protest to the forced prayer is not saying "Amen" at the end (not that anyone notices this). They're good people and having their heathen son-in-law point out things like this or refusing to join in the prayer would just be rude. I know the prayer is meaningless but they seem to enjoy it so what does it matter to me.
I just finished a Richard Swinburne book on the existence of God (for a class). His answer would be that bad things happen so we can be thankful for the good things. Free will requires a level of bad things happening, even natural ones, so we know what "bad" is. If God just made it clear how to avoid accidents, like whispering in your ear to slow down before that car got near you, then we would never develop our own reasoning skills or any sense of needing to be alert to danger. Yeah, his logic doesn't make sense to me either. A much better book is "In Faith and In Doubt" by Dale McGowan. I think he would agree that Thanksgiving is not the time to bring up the issues. That is a time when the strongest religious person is allowed to take control, even by the more moderate in the family. He has a great chapter on understanding that dynamic and understanding the identity issues of religion. Family gatherings can be an opportunity to find those more moderate members of the family and build relationships with them. Anyway, glad everyone is alright.

I give thanks for all those good humans who have helped me, my family, and my friends over the year.
As for prayer, which is a different thing altogether, I normally don’t do it, even though, out of respect for other good, if misguided, humans, I do respect their right to do so.
From a sociological perspective, prayer can be valuable tool to communicate human needs, and to show sympathy for others including total strangers. I think that on of the weaknesses of us non-religious is that we don’t have a similar tool that forces us to think and show concern beyond our personal needs and desires and look to the good of the entire world-wide society. The entirety of the capitalist system is based upon individual selfishness, religion can often be an antidote to this.

We generally take the opportunity of the holiday to have a chat at the dinner table about the things we feel gratitude or appreciation for. I think the emotion is biological, like fear and disgust and hope and all sorts of other feelings that we layer cultural institutions over. Logically, sure giving thanks implies we are giving it to someone, but feelings are often not logical, so I’m happy to be thankful without a deity to thank. I am thankful for my health even if the difference between health and illness is a complex and largely unknowable mixture of genes, environment, behavior, luck, and whatever. I guess I don’t feel any dissonance in acknowledging all the things I appreciate about my life even if I don’t have a reified focus for my appreciation.
That said, I don’t get too fussed if I’m in a home with folks who do have a theistic perspective and choose to offer a prayer as their expression of the same feeling. I’m militant about there being space for my own lack of belief, but I don’t expect or necessarily even always desire that everyone else share my view. I don’t pray, but I don’t feel any need to object to others doing so (apart, I suppose, from inappropriate places like schools and legislatures and so on…).

Today my religious father-in-law led Thanksgiving prayer and we all held hands and bowed our heads while he thanked God for everyone coming together and then he thanked Him for me and my family arriving safely before blessing the food and the other standard dinner prayer things. You see, we were in a car accident yesterday as we drove from Virginia to North Carolina. No one was hurt and the car is scratched up pretty badly but I wanted to say after his prayer "Why did God let us get into an accident at all?" I mean, if He was able to prevent us from being hurt why didn't he just keep the other guy off of the wrong side of the road, you know? Did he think I had $500 too much and an insurance deductible would put me at the right money level? My point is that I actually said none of that. My only form of protest to the forced prayer is not saying "Amen" at the end (not that anyone notices this). They're good people and having their heathen son-in-law point out things like this or refusing to join in the prayer would just be rude. I know the prayer is meaningless but they seem to enjoy it so what does it matter to me.
I do the same, but I keep a copy of Ingersoll's Thanksgiving Sermon with me just in case I ever get the courage to recite it. So far I haven't been able to do it for fear of throwing a wet blanket on the festivities. Too many wouldn't get it, anyway. Those who get it might start World War III. When I became convinced that the universe is natural–that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the world–not even infinite space. I was free–free to think, to express my thoughts–free to live my own ideal–free to live for myself and those I loved–free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination’s wings–free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope–free to judge and determine for myself–free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the “inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past–free from popes and priests, free from all the “called" and “set apart"–free from sanctified mistakes and “holy" lies–free from the winged monsters of the night–free from devils, ghosts and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought–no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings–no claims for my limbs–no lashes for my back–no fires for my flesh–no following another’s steps–no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds. And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers, who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain–for the freedom of labor and thought–to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains–to those who proudly mounted scaffold’s stairs–to those by fire consumed–to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men . And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they have held, and hold it high, that light may conquer darkness still. http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_inger...

Nice, Lois! Thanks for sharing this!

Nice, Lois! Thanks for sharing this!
You're welcome. I wish I deserved some credit for it, but it all belongs to Robert Green Ingersoll. I'm happy to pass it on. Lois