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Greetings from O'Darby. For oddball reasons, I no longer have access to the O'Darby email or password and thus am forced to be O'Darbo for purposes of this post. I haven't been here in months and don't plan to be here regularly, but the OP caught my eye. I do have experience with losing a wife to breast cancer, among other tragedies, and believe the OP raises some fundamental "Religious & Spirituality" issues. I am entirely sympathetic to the circumstances of Mordant and his wife, so please do not take any of my observations as harsh or critical toward them.
When tragedies such as this strike, we are forced to deal with them from whatever perspective on ultimate reality we have at the time. It is extremely difficult to decide what one believes after tragedy strikes. If we have to seek (or invent) a belief system on the fly in the face of tragedy, it is almost inevitable that we will grasp at any straw of meaning and hope. When my late wife was diagnosed with cancer, we were both very grateful that our belief systems had been solidly in place for many years. They were not Pollyanna-ish, mindless beliefs but firm convictions arrived at after long study and reflection.
Although my and my wife's respective beliefs were somewhat different, they were diametrically opposed to those of Mordant. We both held strong convictions in an overarching meaning and purpose to our earthly existence and in the survival of consciousness. These convictions were the primary reason that the doctors and cancer center staff were simply agog at the grace with which my wife faced her treatment and death. (I've mentioned elsewhere that after her death I had three compelling, objective, real-world After Death Communications that reinforced my own convictions.)
Mordant suggests that he derives comfort (or something like it) from his atheistic beliefs. I don't know the full scope of his atheism, so I will posit a straw man atheist who believes earthly life has no overarching meaning or purpose, tragedies are random events that "just happen," and there is no afterlife. If someone holds strong, well-informed convictions in this vein when tragedy strikes, then he is forced to deal with the tragedy on these terms. To jet off to Lourdes in hopes of a miracle would be an obvious act of desperation.
I find it impossible to believe that any atheist actually derives comfort from the convictions I have posited for my straw man. To say this strikes me as self-evidently nonsensical. Yes, an atheist with strong convictions is forced by intellectual honesty to deal with tragedy on these terms. But to derive comfort from such convictions? No, hardly.
Mordant describes his convictions as "very handy" because he is spared any notion of his wife's cancer being visited upon her by a deity and/or any false hope of a deity working a miracle. Again, this is the perspective that someone with strong atheistic convictions is intellectually forced to have, although I find the description "very handy" almost as odd as I would find the description "comforting."
In the abstract, it seems obvious to me that convictions such as my wife and I held would be far more comforting than atheistic convictions could ever be. Not only did our convictions infuse every aspect of our marriage and lives with deeper meaning and purpose, but they also gave us an entirely different perspective on her illness and a hope for eternity. Comforting? Yes, indeed.
We did not believe that my wife's cancer had been visited upon her by any malevolent deity. We did, however, believe that it was God's plan for her life and our marriage and that such illnesses serve God's plan for humanity. Yes, she died at 54 when she might well have lived to 104 (or 14, for that matter). In the great scheme of things as we conceived of it, the age of death is no big deal. Moreover, not only with my wife's illness but with a million other tragedies I have seen the tremendously beneficial effects and ripples of such events. I have no difficulty whatsoever with the notion that the reality in which we find ourselves is entirely consistent with a omnibenevolent deity who has an eternal perspective and plan.
(Yes, we prayed for a miracle remission if it were consistent with the God's will, but with the acceptance that miracles are few and far between. We were in no way disappointed or bitter when no miracle occurred and were very grateful for seven wonderful years and a peaceful passing. We often said those were the best years of our 33-year marriage.)
The perspective that what Mordant and his wife are experiencing is inconsistent with the existence of an omnibenevolent deity strikes me as a very parochial (i.e., finite human) perspective on what such a deity "should" be like and what the creation of such a deity "should" look like. Even from my finite human perspective, it seems to me that a reality such as we experience, with all its tragedy and suffering - much of it the result of the misuse of human free will - is pretty much exactly what I would expect of an omnibenevolent deity whose purposes are what Christianity posits them to be.
The bottom line, of course, is: What is ontologically true? If the straw man's atheism is true, so be it - I will have derived comfort from false convictions, strong and well-informed as they may have been, and will simply go poof when I die. If my convictions are true, the straw man atheist will have lived with false convictions that provided no hope or comfort but will be in for a surprise in the end (a happy one, we hope, although Christianity certainly doesn't guarantee this to an atheist). All that each of us can do is be diligent about making sure our convictions are as strong and well-informed as they can be - hopefully before tragedy strikes.
Best wishes to Mordant and his wife, but his description of his atheistic convictions as "very handy" is simply what someone with such convictions is pretty much forced to say. I would describe my own convictions as "exceedingly more beneficial," but all that each of us can do is deal with tragedy on the basis of what we sincerely believe.
You say 'forced to have' multiple times. There's nothing 'forced' here. It's the opposite - it's just a simple acceptance of reality. It's entirely unforced in fact.
I feel like this thread is dealing with very sensitive subject matter all round. We've all been affected by cancer. So I think we have to tread very carefully and try not to be insensitive to what people are going through and have gone through.
I'm sure there's nothing I can say to you that you probably haven't already thought about.
So I'm going to speak in general about 'God's plan'.
If we want to believe that cancer is part of gods plan for us, we can't pick and choose who we think is okay to get it just because of an age / time factor. Very young kids get cancer too, live no real quality of life, in pain, and die at a young age. I have no idea how a belief in god in these cases is 'comforting'. There's more clarity in the assumption that cancer has nothing to do with god, it's just biology and cells gone wrong.
Okay maybe not 'comforting' in the sense that you mean it. But there's no grappling with the inevitable questions of why does someone get a raw deal and someone else gets a better deal?. There's no why us? Why them? There is no why. It just is. It puts everyone on a level playing field in my view.
Greetings from O'Darby. For oddball reasons, I no longer have access to the O'Darby email or password and thus am forced to be O'Darbo for purposes of this post. I haven't been here in months and don't plan to be here regularly, but the OP caught my eye. I do have experience with losing a wife to breast cancer, among other tragedies, and believe the OP raises some fundamental "Religious & Spirituality" issues. I am entirely sympathetic to the circumstances of Mordant and his wife, so please do not take any of my observations as harsh or critical toward them.
When tragedies such as this strike, we are forced to deal with them from whatever perspective on ultimate reality we have at the time. It is extremely difficult to decide what one believes after tragedy strikes. If we have to seek (or invent) a belief system on the fly in the face of tragedy, it is almost inevitable that we will grasp at any straw of meaning and hope. When my late wife was diagnosed with cancer, we were both very grateful that our belief systems had been solidly in place for many years. They were not Pollyanna-ish, mindless beliefs but firm convictions arrived at after long study and reflection.
Although my and my wife's respective beliefs were somewhat different, they were diametrically opposed to those of Mordant. We both held strong convictions in an overarching meaning and purpose to our earthly existence and in the survival of consciousness. These convictions were the primary reason that the doctors and cancer center staff were simply agog at the grace with which my wife faced her treatment and death. (I've mentioned elsewhere that after her death I had three compelling, objective, real-world After Death Communications that reinforced my own convictions.)
Mordant suggests that he derives comfort (or something like it) from his atheistic beliefs. I don't know the full scope of his atheism, so I will posit a straw man atheist who believes earthly life has no overarching meaning or purpose, tragedies are random events that "just happen," and there is no afterlife. If someone holds strong, well-informed convictions in this vein when tragedy strikes, then he is forced to deal with the tragedy on these terms. To jet off to Lourdes in hopes of a miracle would be an obvious act of desperation.
I find it impossible to believe that any atheist actually derives comfort from the convictions I have posited for my straw man. To say this strikes me as self-evidently nonsensical. Yes, an atheist with strong convictions is forced by intellectual honesty to deal with tragedy on these terms. But to derive comfort from such convictions? No, hardly.
Mordant describes his convictions as "very handy" because he is spared any notion of his wife's cancer being visited upon her by a deity and/or any false hope of a deity working a miracle. Again, this is the perspective that someone with strong atheistic convictions is intellectually forced to have, although I find the description "very handy" almost as odd as I would find the description "comforting."
In the abstract, it seems obvious to me that convictions such as my wife and I held would be far more comforting than atheistic convictions could ever be. Not only did our convictions infuse every aspect of our marriage and lives with deeper meaning and purpose, but they also gave us an entirely different perspective on her illness and a hope for eternity. Comforting? Yes, indeed.
We did not believe that my wife's cancer had been visited upon her by any malevolent deity. We did, however, believe that it was God's plan for her life and our marriage and that such illnesses serve God's plan for humanity. Yes, she died at 54 when she might well have lived to 104 (or 14, for that matter). In the great scheme of things as we conceived of it, the age of death is no big deal. Moreover, not only with my wife's illness but with a million other tragedies I have seen the tremendously beneficial effects and ripples of such events. I have no difficulty whatsoever with the notion that the reality in which we find ourselves is entirely consistent with a omnibenevolent deity who has an eternal perspective and plan.
(Yes, we prayed for a miracle remission if it were consistent with the God's will, but with the acceptance that miracles are few and far between. We were in no way disappointed or bitter when no miracle occurred and were very grateful for seven wonderful years and a peaceful passing. We often said those were the best years of our 33-year marriage.)
The perspective that what Mordant and his wife are experiencing is inconsistent with the existence of an omnibenevolent deity strikes me as a very parochial (i.e., finite human) perspective on what such a deity "should" be like and what the creation of such a deity "should" look like. Even from my finite human perspective, it seems to me that a reality such as we experience, with all its tragedy and suffering - much of it the result of the misuse of human free will - is pretty much exactly what I would expect of an omnibenevolent deity whose purposes are what Christianity posits them to be.
The bottom line, of course, is: What is ontologically true? If the straw man's atheism is true, so be it - I will have derived comfort from false convictions, strong and well-informed as they may have been, and will simply go poof when I die. If my convictions are true, the straw man atheist will have lived with false convictions that provided no hope or comfort but will be in for a surprise in the end (a happy one, we hope, although Christianity certainly doesn't guarantee this to an atheist). All that each of us can do is be diligent about making sure our convictions are as strong and well-informed as they can be - hopefully before tragedy strikes.
Best wishes to Mordant and his wife, but his description of his atheistic convictions as "very handy" is simply what someone with such convictions is pretty much forced to say. I would describe my own convictions as "exceedingly more beneficial," but all that each of us can do is deal with tragedy on the basis of what we sincerely believe.
As a non believer, I certainly hope that you are reunited with your wife in Heaven where you can live for eternity with God, Jesus, the prophets, angels and saints.
But quite frankly.... for someone like me... to be in a place with someone like you for eternity would not be something I would want to even contemplate. And sadly, it really doesn't even have anything to do with what you actually believe
No one needs to hear your self-serving input, O'Darb_. Your posts are tiresome even in 'normal' conditions; now you have the gall to turn a thread like this into an outlet for your anti-atheist grievances? Your insistence on clinging to the myths of your childhood and rationalizing them as 'well-informed' is, quite frankly, pathetic. Just because you can't conceive of atheism being comforting doesn't mean that other perspectives don't exist. I remember being a young believer, in high school, aimlessly driving around with an atheist friend, and that friend said to me that he wouldn't want eternal life anyway, as this one life was quite enough. Maybe more than enough; the implication was that he'd have preferred never to have been born at all. I remember being saddened and somewhat shocked by that perspective at the time, age 17 or so. Within just a few years, it became my perspective. The prospect of eternal life now strikes me as torture that I'm glad we won't be subjected to. If you've been lucky enough to remain psychologically equipped to deem your long-held beliefs a source of comfort rather than horror, thank your imaginary God that 'He' created you unable to truly conceive of what 'infinity' is and what 'infinite life' would actually entail. Permanent prison posing as paradise. Every 'soul' in such a condition would be clinically insane, were souls real and humanlike in their properties. I'm thankful to the multiverse that my lifespan is constrained by the length of my innumerable cells' telomeres and that existence is but a temporary burden imposed on me by forces beyond my control, forces both personal and impersonal, but decidedly not divine.
Best wishes to you and your family, mordant. Figurative prayers and all that. May the pain be as minimal as possible.
O'Darby, lad, ye're entitled to y'er own beliefs, so y'are.
What we're experiencing isn't inconsistent with the existence of all deities, only benevolent and protective ones, and of course there are all sorts of ways to squint at the situation and decide it's somehow in everyone's best interest. I found such squinting to be very effortful and unproductive and I'm glad to be free of it. YMMV.
I have lost a wife before to death, and another to mental illness, and I've lost a child. I have been bereaved while a believer and while an unbeliever, and for me at least, it has been much less fraught to experience loss as an unbeliever.
I wouldn't quite call it comforting, but rather, I would call grieving as a believer to be discomfiting. All the useless questions are gone now, and are not adding to the pain of loss. Why me, why her, what did I/she do to deserve this, etc. I am not pressured to view a ghastly obscenity as some fourth-dimensional chess move by the gods, either.
If you can't wrap your mind around that, it's okay. You should understand your own losses in your own way. Please respect me in the same way.
Today's consult was not really moving the needle. The surgeon confessed it is "concerning" but could not provide any additional clarity until surgery is performed. It is "possible" that the tumor is precancerous or even benign but those are long odds. The likely explanation for the bout of projectile vomiting is something called "torsion" where you turn over in bed or whatever and the tumor gets twisted around its own blood supply and parts of it start to die and other parts increase their growth rate to compensate.
A surgery date will be set shortly, but sometime in the next 2 to 3 weeks is the best they can do. Judging from them being so booked up, and from the constant parade of cars dropping off people in various stages of disintegration at the main entrance of the cancer center, a lot of cancer is abroad in the world.
There likely won't be any more news until the surgery and, in more detail, in the week or two following.
Thanks to all (except O'Darby) for your kind concern.
Today's consult was not really moving the needle. The surgeon confessed it is "concerning" but could not provide any additional clarity until surgery is performed. It is "possible" that the tumor is precancerous or even benign but those are long odds. The likely explanation for the bout of projectile vomiting is something called "torsion" where you turn over in bed or whatever and the tumor gets twisted around its own blood supply and parts of it start to die and other parts increase their growth rate to compensate.
A surgery date will be set shortly, but sometime in the next 2 to 3 weeks is the best they can do. Judging from them being so booked up, and from the constant parade of cars dropping off people in various stages of disintegration at the main entrance of the cancer center, a lot of cancer is abroad in the world.
There likely won't be any more news until the surgery and, in more detail, in the week or two following.
Thanks to all (except O'Darby) for your kind concern.
2-3 weeks? Wow I'm so sorry your wife has to wait so long. Can't to be honest understand why they're not jumping on it sooner. Can you try another hospital or consultant or something?
Hm, this thread title sounds like the title of a work of literature, lol.
Anyway ... some of you have asked how my wife is doing so I thought I'd just put it here.
I believe I've mentioned she had two total knee replacements, in July and October of last year. Very challenging surgeries. She didn't bounce back from the second one really well, and was uncharacteristically tired and weepy over nothing, etc. Then she had an "episode" involving pelvic pain and puking and such so we finally induced someone to take a closer look and she has this tumor the size of a mid-term fetus in her abdomen which somehow was not palpated or otherwise noticed through two pre-op clearances last year.
Then a cancer blood test (CA-125) came back leaning pretty strongly toward cancer.
Today she had an MRI and they called her right back and are getting her in for an emergency hysterectomy. We have the initial consult with the "gyno-oncologist" tomorrow, a little over an hour away. It is almost certainly ovarian cancer. The plan is to remove all the plumbing, freeze and section it and put it all under a microscope and get her "typed" (as in Type X cancer) which will give us a prognosis.
There is some hope that it's been caught early enough not to have spread, and the surgery will be sufficient to deal with it.
She's holding up very well. She's not afraid of death, but very much wants to stay alive for her kids and for me. Especially her autistic adult son who lives with us and who she is steering through various therapies and coaching.
This is where the lack of god-belief (and therefore, the expectation of a beneficently god-directed life) comes in very handy. This is just another thing happening, one that we very much don't like. We know the drill. But it's not personal or directed.
We had a good conversation with my stepson today, apprising him of everything. Since the autistic tend to wonder how everything impacts them, I assured him that in the worst case scenario he and I are solid and nothing will change in terms of where he lives, etc. Like me, he is mostly just numb at this point. And waiting.
Mordant I am terribly sorry to hear this. You have always talked about your wife with such affection and your stepson. I am sending good thoughts and vibrations, it's scary and the unknown makes it even more so. She really has been through it, I also had two knee replacements and I know how painful it is and how it takes forever to heal....and then this. Stay strong, ask for help when you need it and just know there are those of us out here who care.
Greetings from O'Darby. For oddball reasons, I no longer have access to the O'Darby email or password and thus am forced to be O'Darbo for purposes of this post.
Huh, usually when you can't access your account, it means you've been shelved. Your brand of ridiculousness and uncaring, completely selfish and delusional agenda to somehow sway Mordant away from his evilness as an atheist is.....I can't even think of a word. Repulsive and enraging. That's a sure fire way to win souls. What Mordant said about his wife is what is important, not your extremely inappropriate proselytizing and kicking a man when he's down.
"Oh Mordant, sorry about your wife. If you repent now, your wife will survive and thrive!! God will save her if you will only accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior." "Otherwise, you and she will spend eternity suffering even more! Repent! Repent! Repent!"
This is basically what you are saying to him. Way to go jerk. Is your name George?
Greetings from O'Darby. For oddball reasons, I no longer have access to the O'Darby email or password and thus am forced to be O'Darbo for purposes of this post. I haven't been here in months and don't plan to be here regularly, but the OP caught my eye. I do have experience with losing a wife to breast cancer, among other tragedies, and believe the OP raises some fundamental "Religious & Spirituality" issues. I am entirely sympathetic to the circumstances of Mordant and his wife, so please do not take any of my observations as harsh or critical toward them.
When tragedies such as this strike, we are forced to deal with them from whatever perspective on ultimate reality we have at the time. It is extremely difficult to decide what one believes after tragedy strikes. If we have to seek (or invent) a belief system on the fly in the face of tragedy, it is almost inevitable that we will grasp at any straw of meaning and hope. When my late wife was diagnosed with cancer, we were both very grateful that our belief systems had been solidly in place for many years. They were not Pollyanna-ish, mindless beliefs but firm convictions arrived at after long study and reflection.
Although my and my wife's respective beliefs were somewhat different, they were diametrically opposed to those of Mordant. We both held strong convictions in an overarching meaning and purpose to our earthly existence and in the survival of consciousness. These convictions were the primary reason that the doctors and cancer center staff were simply agog at the grace with which my wife faced her treatment and death. (I've mentioned elsewhere that after her death I had three compelling, objective, real-world After Death Communications that reinforced my own convictions.)
Mordant suggests that he derives comfort (or something like it) from his atheistic beliefs. I don't know the full scope of his atheism, so I will posit a straw man atheist who believes earthly life has no overarching meaning or purpose, tragedies are random events that "just happen," and there is no afterlife. If someone holds strong, well-informed convictions in this vein when tragedy strikes, then he is forced to deal with the tragedy on these terms. To jet off to Lourdes in hopes of a miracle would be an obvious act of desperation.
I find it impossible to believe that any atheist actually derives comfort from the convictions I have posited for my straw man. To say this strikes me as self-evidently nonsensical. Yes, an atheist with strong convictions is forced by intellectual honesty to deal with tragedy on these terms. But to derive comfort from such convictions? No, hardly.
Mordant describes his convictions as "very handy" because he is spared any notion of his wife's cancer being visited upon her by a deity and/or any false hope of a deity working a miracle. Again, this is the perspective that someone with strong atheistic convictions is intellectually forced to have, although I find the description "very handy" almost as odd as I would find the description "comforting."
In the abstract, it seems obvious to me that convictions such as my wife and I held would be far more comforting than atheistic convictions could ever be. Not only did our convictions infuse every aspect of our marriage and lives with deeper meaning and purpose, but they also gave us an entirely different perspective on her illness and a hope for eternity. Comforting? Yes, indeed.
We did not believe that my wife's cancer had been visited upon her by any malevolent deity. We did, however, believe that it was God's plan for her life and our marriage and that such illnesses serve God's plan for humanity. Yes, she died at 54 when she might well have lived to 104 (or 14, for that matter). In the great scheme of things as we conceived of it, the age of death is no big deal. Moreover, not only with my wife's illness but with a million other tragedies I have seen the tremendously beneficial effects and ripples of such events. I have no difficulty whatsoever with the notion that the reality in which we find ourselves is entirely consistent with a omnibenevolent deity who has an eternal perspective and plan.
(Yes, we prayed for a miracle remission if it were consistent with the God's will, but with the acceptance that miracles are few and far between. We were in no way disappointed or bitter when no miracle occurred and were very grateful for seven wonderful years and a peaceful passing. We often said those were the best years of our 33-year marriage.)
The perspective that what Mordant and his wife are experiencing is inconsistent with the existence of an omnibenevolent deity strikes me as a very parochial (i.e., finite human) perspective on what such a deity "should" be like and what the creation of such a deity "should" look like. Even from my finite human perspective, it seems to me that a reality such as we experience, with all its tragedy and suffering - much of it the result of the misuse of human free will - is pretty much exactly what I would expect of an omnibenevolent deity whose purposes are what Christianity posits them to be.
The bottom line, of course, is: What is ontologically true? If the straw man's atheism is true, so be it - I will have derived comfort from false convictions, strong and well-informed as they may have been, and will simply go poof when I die. If my convictions are true, the straw man atheist will have lived with false convictions that provided no hope or comfort but will be in for a surprise in the end (a happy one, we hope, although Christianity certainly doesn't guarantee this to an atheist). All that each of us can do is be diligent about making sure our convictions are as strong and well-informed as they can be - hopefully before tragedy strikes.
Best wishes to Mordant and his wife, but his description of his atheistic convictions as "very handy" is simply what someone with such convictions is pretty much forced to say. I would describe my own convictions as "exceedingly more beneficial," but all that each of us can do is deal with tragedy on the basis of what we sincerely believe.
When my step daughter died the only thing that gave me any hope I could survive it is other people had lived thru it a well. Luckily no one tried telling me how to process it because I think I would have blown a fuse.
Your wife died at around my age. I imagine that was devastating to you and your family. For that there is sorrow.
There is comfort in genuine humility.
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