I view religion as just an isolationist form of tribalism or in other words social networking. It is generally a miserly overall negative form of conservativism in social networking. It demands exclusive prejudice to various extents. It is a system of shaming. Shaming cannot motivate positive behavior. Shaming is only capable of creating a fear of getting caught. Therefore it is not even a real code of morality but instead only a code of authoritarian obedience and outsourcing of real philosophy, moral thought, and character depth.

It is natural for your folks to want their extended family to be a part of their tribe. In this vain, you need to reassure your family that they have a place in your life in meaningful ways. The trick is to never try to change your family through logic about their beliefs. These are the primary barriers that will only make your life harder.

Beliefs have no logical basis and arguing logic will only alienate you from their tribe. Humans struggle to reassess things they accepted as gullible children. Even those that are capable within their self awareness are often unwilling to disadvantage themselves substantially in life by abandoning their exclusively prejudiced social network that they were raised with as this defies the tribal survivalist instinct. It is important to understand that it is only possible to inspire curiosity, self awareness, and learning. No one can force someone else to learn, understand, or seek out accurate information. You can only change yourself and no one else. So break down the fundamental elements behind their complex social behaviors and use that understanding to address the issues and conflicts that they are not self aware of and where they create problems.

I’m atheist, used to be a very active Jehovah’s Witness, am now physically disabled and stuck living with my Witness family. It is very challenging for me to tip toe around their prejudice. I’m confident that, if I was not disabled, I could live an independent and happy life, but I wouldn’t really involve my family a whole lot. Heck I moved 2k miles away from them the first chance I had quite a long time ago. Back then I didn’t have the self awareness of the underlying psychology. Now I view all of my family’s interactions in this light of tribalism. I know they will be more prejudice when they are around certain people or after various religious events, and I don’t let their prejudice bother me. It is just tribalism and complex human social hierarchy manifesting in primitive behaviors. I don’t take offense at those behaviors any more than my cats fighting to be beside me for a little lunch food scrap. I also have my own ethics and character depth that is wholely independent of pressures from others. That independence makes it easy to turn conversations around and steer them when confronted by people that have no real moral depth and only parrot and shame.