A lot of people say they were brought up in a religious environment and when old enough they tossed it like a live grenade. So what is the hook? What is the clincher that turns people religious. I'm not sure if its from introduction thru schooling, although I think it fair that all religions be included. There must be something that clicks for some and not for others. What does it take, some serious trauma? depression? ????
In my case was unacceptability of religious history, when I learned of the atrocities done in the name of god, I no longer wanted to support religious indoctrination. Because if I did, I would mean that I would support the mass killings, the human oppresion, done under the banner of religion. The trasformation of becoming an atheist, did not happen overnight, it was a gradual change in my late teens and early twenties.
Makes me wonder if introducing religion into public education does the religious movement more harm than good. I wonder if the people who allow religion in schools actually believe it will increase the future total of churchgoers or create better adults? I wonder how many potential converts they lose? School trustees, unless they are elected, must really believe they are doing the kids a service. Legislators I have to think are doing it for votes. Either way I see selfish motives.
It still leaves a mark. For example, despite my atheism, why is christianity more credible to me than scientology or islam? There is also a sectarian and cultural tradition bias. Every superstition leaves it's mark even if you don't believe it anymore. I even consider waiting till after the new year to put a new calander up because my mother would be horrified if I put it up before the new year due to it being bad luck. I see significance in seeing two magpies at once, because that's good luck. Religion and magpie superstitions really are a virus that infects even non-believers.
Enterprise-D; By the same token some children hate science lessons, hence the big financial drive in Britain, to coax children into taking science seriously. so what do you do; cut science from the school curriculum? So what? Anybody would. But what makes you so certain that we are being indoctrinated? You give the impression, that they are forced to worship God, I had no experiance of this when I was at school, and neither did my children. While they may be forced to attend school assemblies, they are not forced to believe in God. This is a typical paranoid reaction, from atheist types, despite their lack of understanding. Like I said, atheists understand what they're capable of understanding, in your case it materialism. As a gross materialist, understanding God and spirituality, is akin to to a blind walking alone in a mine-field where all the mines are clearly marked with brightly coloured tags. I can play and sing "the wind cries mary" on my guitar, that means I must fully understand Jimi Hendrix. That is the value of your statement. The reality is, you don't know, yet you act as though you do. The only thing the materialist can use in his favour, is to ask, to see God with his own eyes, or "who created God", and both these reveal that; (a) they haven't read and understood any scripture, or; (b) despite having read, and claimed to understand, they don't want to believe in God. Either way, it boils down to ignorance. 1. If they love you, then there's no question. 2. That is your opinion, you've still yet to convince me (not that it matters) 3. I don't know that you were hypnotized. For all i know you could saying that to give RI's a bad name. I think that goes without saying where caring parents are concerned, don't you? No more than they should be forced to go to a science lesson. Not if it is the law of the land. If it is the law, you either accept it, become an outlaw, or work three or four jobs so that you can set up home in Siberia. I imagine its a load of hooey in order to cover up the truth. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Because the assumption may have some truth to it. People who genuinely believing God is real don't tend to go round the pubs with the sole intention of getting rat-arsed. "Is it not a fact" is a question, I do not need to resort to any kind of tactical manouvre for something so obvious, which is why I don't give a monkeys about the stats. Of course it does, read above. Sexed up, is a terminology used to describe something that has been manipulated in order to give a desired impression. It was used alot in the farce that occured, in the run up to the mass slaughter of innocent Iraqi's in order to gain political and social support. Jan.
Surely it has - for every single person in existence? If it weren't for the education nobody would know about it and thus wouldn't have an opinion concerning that which they knew nothing about. People are not born with a belief - they know nothing about gods, heaven/hell, afterlives or anything else. I would consider most of us, (if we were being honest), as the more influenced people. Our opinions have been shaped in one way or another by what we have been 'taught', (be it schools/parents/TV/whatever). "Normal people", (for the sake of this discussion), go about their lives nonplussed about debating religious matters and what-not, it comes down to us - those that actually have been influenced by it more than most. Although I'd personally prefer it not to exist at all, I can accept religious education - because religion is there whether I like it or not.. It's "worship" that bothers me. Letter Update: I have received a response this morning to my second letter, (which went into detail concerning bias and how I dislike that bias). There are a couple of things that make me raise an eyebrow, which I will post here if nobody objects.. He starts off by saying that if I tell him to that my child will not attend 'worship' that the school have no choice but to comply with my wishes, (as it should be). He goes on to state that the "religious traditions in Great Britain are mainly christian", which is obviously his answer to why the bias exists. He then makes what I would consider a callous judgement: "Part of my interpretation of christian character would be the support of christian values i.e love, respect, peace etc" I would to this ask why christianity need even be mentioned here unless he were to try and imply that 'love, respect and peace' are creations of christianity - that before the creation of christianity itself there was no such thing as love, respect or peace. If they wanted to merely convey morals then there would never be a need to bring religion into it. Oh well, what can ya do..
Interesting interpretations, especially by those who stress on no belief in God.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This is how I remember my "religious" education: We had prayers before class. Except for the fact that they began "Eternal God..." I have no memory of what they were even though I said them everyday for 10 years. There was also a prayer after class, of which I have absolutely no memory. This is because the prayers were said by rote and I never paid any attention to them. Plus going home was a greater priority so prayers were faster and the last few sentences usually ran into each other as we rushed towards the exit. One of my parents was struck by my lack of religious education around the time I was 7 or 8 (no one in my immediate family is religious, but grandmothers can be opinionated). So a teacher was hired to teach me to read the Quran. Unfortunately, the only time she could come coincided with my favorite show (I've always been a TV junkie), so I just listlessly repeated whatever she read, drowning in self-pity at the injustice of it all. Had no idea what I was reading anyway, since it was all squiggly lines to me then, so I got rapidly bored of the whole thing. This inspired me in a few days (maybe it was the second day) to sit so that I could see the reflection of the TV show in the mirror behind my teacher. Adept at multitasking, I still repeated whatever she said but with probably greater enthusiasm since I could now see the show (I'm not going to name it, its too corny!) This actually went on for quite some time in the same vein. I did mange to learn the alphabet though, which helped me to read erotic novels in Urdu (same script) unbeknown to my mother, who, poor thing had no idea to what use I was putting my "education". So all in all it wasn't a complete loss.
I can not remember what our religious education teacher taught us because it was so boring- I can remember two or three things though one time, when we were making easter cards, she was not impressed when my friend had drawn a picture of the devil on the back with a big cross through it (actually it looked more like a fat tic tac with big teeth and horns) - she said "No" seven times in a row and expressed something about how easter is not the most suitable time to express the dualistic nature of christianity another time she had our wrapt attention when she asked the class if we wanted to know what hell was like. She made us close our eyes and then slap our scrunched up fists over them - then she said something about "the vision of darkness" and we felt like we had just fallen victim to another stupid adult trick (like say playing musical chairs in an empty room ) . then she graphically gave a demonstration of what a sinful soul looks like - she took out a small handkerchief splattered with red dye, but we all thought it looked like the handkerchief of the boy who fell off the log swing last year and collected it with his head when it came back through again (he used to get frequent nose bleeds at inopportune moments ever since) - then she brought out a fresh clean one to show us what a sinless soul looked like (which was probably just as well because the boy was picking his nose as she was speaking) anyway, I guess the moral of the story is that any parent who thinks they can cleverly negotiate their child's life experiences for them to make them turn into the exact mould of their desire will have learned a few things by the time their child turns 25
Well Lg, if you intergrated logicaly, rationally, you would realize that religion all that it has been is a con game, that has been pulled on you, and many, many others for milliniums. And alas, that is what many atheist, who were religious at one time, have come to observe and realize! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It is truly surprising how many of have dealt with religiosity in life! Of the two public schools I hate attended so far, nothing religious has ever been fed to me, which is probably why I am so surprised. Both of my parents believe in God, but my Dad's belief is nominal at best, and my mom worships and doesn't bother me. In a state of transition myself, I could not tell you where I stand on the issue as of now.
Actually Q, you could probably show him arguments for any philosophy or religion and he'd probably still believe the world is wicked without Christianity.
I guess your failing is that you can't manage a logical and rational presentation on why religion is a con game. Seems like all you can come up with are confidence statements, which, ironically, operate on the same general principles that my befuddled religiou s education teacher used so many years ago
True, until you run across this guy, one of the worst possible proponents of atheism I've ever seen: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=brettkeane
This is were you fail Lg. It's not up to me to "show" you, it's up to you to realize it! The problem is that your so intertwined with your beliefs that you don't take the objective look at your beliefs needed to make an integrated, rational, and logical look at your beliefs. So it's like living in the bubble of "theism" and yet have no way to look from outside the bubble, once you managed to look from outside the theistic bubble and take a look at the wider picture of mysticism, you will realize the stupidity that you accept as factual, yet with no evidence just mere faith, in what you believe to be true. For many atheist who had their path of being indoctrinated as a child, latter were able to look from outside the theistic bubble and realize that all mythical beliefs were in fact just that mysticism from primitive minds. Religion has been a tool for human destruction and oppression, god has been the sickness of human evolution. Mysticism is nothing more then the acceptance of irrational, beliefs as factual. Which is what religion is, the acceptance of mythical beliefs of ancient dogmatic people who were being oppressed, they needed this beliefs of a better afterlife, for here they suffered under Egyptian, Roman rule! So religion has been the best of con game ever invented. One that unified peoples beliefs to a central ideal "we are special" Each sect beliefs to be the true path to god, heaven, and so forth. The controversy comes when these different sects fight for majority rule, hence ancient religious wars, even till today the same ideology applies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnQ22CsLMQo
I started watching some of these but then I got understandably distracted by this. What's so bad about him?
