Is Religion an abuse of childhood?

Vivisectus

lazybones32 wrote: »

@ Vivisectus:

I found over 3 million hits but here's 1 of those 3,100,000, seeing as you can't do things yourself. http://www.mediawatchuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Summer-2012.pdf

Would you like some time to take a closer look at your source? You do know that mediawatch is a christian "family values" style advocacy platform? And that Dr. Struthers himself says he wrote his book "from a christian perspective"?

I quote:

"Our sexual nature is…a force that we must harness and direct to aid in the process of sanctification, toward becoming holy."

Don't get me wrong - I am just as uncomfortable around the entire subject as you are: I am conditioned in the same way. But it is stuff like this that makes you realize just how strong cultural taboo's are, and the kind of tunnel-vision they can induce.

The reason I got you started on this subject is that it illustrates beautifully how we can be conditioned to simply ignore what we are taught is normal (threatening children, explicitly or implicitly, with eternal punishment) and at the same time condemn, often on rather tenuous grounds, what we are taught to revile (exposing children to erotica).

Cabaal

lazybones32 wrote: »

Can you tell- without using Google, etc - what processes are involved in brainwashing?

I'm not wasting my time with your little time wasting excercise,

Given you can sort of use google and/or a library I'm sure you can learn to understand it yourself

I do think teaching the catholic religion in schools is fine and good.

FYP

Cabaal

Vivisectus wrote: »

"Our sexual nature is…a force that we must harness and direct to aid in the process of sanctification, toward becoming holy."
.

Scary people think like this,

I think they'll actually find that our sexual nature is for forming bonds with others in our species and procreation, basically the same as most other species on our planet.

Yet another group that can't face the truth about a basic impulse that is an integral part of our species.

dutopia

It's too general a statement. I would say staunchly religious parents who force religious belief and teachings within every aspect of a child's life to the point of making the child miserable - maybe that could be considered abuse. Making you go to church once a week on a Sunday morning - not so much.

Qualitymark

Not many groups would insist on an image of a man being tortured to death being placed on the wall of every classroom to promote their worldview to children…

Cabaal

dutopia wrote: »

It's too general a statement. I would say staunchly religious parents who force religious belief and teachings within every aspect of a child's life to the point of making the child miserable - maybe that could be considered abuse. Making you go to church once a week on a Sunday morning - not so much.

What if the mass preaches burning in hell for wrong doing's and sinful behavior (being gay, being pro-choice etc)

Time and time again people claim they don't do this anymore, yet my wife has heard it several times from different priests.

robindch

Qualitymark wrote: »

Not many groups would insist on an image of a man being tortured to death being placed on the wall of every classroom to promote their worldview to children…

Here's what I was assured was a standard secondary school classroom in Pyongyang, North Korea.

The people over the blackboard might different, but the pictures are there for the same reason, and the heroic symbology and the tone and much of the content of the backing prose, are very similar to their religious counterparts here in Ireland.

Educate Together has nothing like this.

lazybones32

Peanut Butter Jelly wrote: »

I paid attention until I saw "Campaigning for family values in the media". I can tell from that it is not going to be independent. It's effectively a mammy's group who want to say porn is bad, blissfully unaware their sons are looking at it.

As for the "scientific" content of the piece, it's a couple of sparce quotes from one guy, who wrote a study that wasn't peer reviewed. I could find a study that proved the opposite of that study you posted, with a guy saying porn didn't affect the brain, and that's it. He has mentioned no statistics, apart from one that said 80% of people see porn accidentally for the first time which is a pile of turd.

Oh, and some of your 3,180,000 results are actually advertising porn and hook-ups, so you technically don't have 3,180,000 links backing you up.

I just chose a link from the search engine...if someone cannot be bothered to do it themselves, why should I do it for them? I'll save the good stuff for real debaters, not the monkeys.

Vivisectus

lazybones32 wrote: »

I just chose a link from the search engine...if someone cannot be bothered to do it themselves, why should I do it for them? I'll save the good stuff for real debaters, not the monkeys.

And who can argue with such a gem of debating technique as this! The rapier-like wit, the iron logic, the eloquent repartee...

robindch

lazybones32 wrote: »

I'll save the good stuff for real debaters, not the monkeys.

Judging by the quality of your input so far, one can only conclude that you think everybody's a monkey.

Cut out the name-calling and try debate like an adult.

nozzferrahhtoo

lazybones32 wrote: »

People here on A.A, love to spout the claim of brainwashing by the RCC but, dammit, do people even know what is involved in brainwashing?

Actually yes I do. It is something I have studied relatively heavily. There is no one thing involved in it. It can be performed in many ways on many levels.

One relevant example I can think of is stolkholm syndrome. As you may or may not know this is, over simplified but essentially correct, where captives emotionally bond with their captors.

Religion memes have evolved to use things like this in brain washing. For example many Christians are held captive to the notion that Jesus is a perfect being and we are admonished to strive towards emulating his perfection despite the fact we will always fail because we are dirty sinners who must beg for forgivness. As another man said "We are created sick and commanded to get well".

But in a twist this Christ character is said to love us despite our failings. To be so full of unending love for us that he positively drips with it for us despite our not deserving it.

And for this we need to feel "grateful".

This is a perfect example of brain washing. It is a psychological variation on a mental form of stolkholm syndrome designed to manipulate us into loving out captor. It is as ingenious as it is insidious and I can only take my hat off and bow to the power of Natural selection in memeology to produce such a perfect virus.

And nowhere did this fact break my heart more than when I watched the documentry Debroah-13 and watched a, beautiful in every way, teenage girl reduced to abject self hating tears at her own horrific and sinful and flawed nature.... and all the while hating herself espousing her unending gratitude that Jesus would deign in all his greatness to love her anyway. It was a horrific example of the mental abuse of an innocent and beautiful child.

And this is far from the only example of such "brain washing" that we engage in as our species perpetuates individual religions to the minds around it.

Sorry if that was a bit verbose. I note from your most recent post you prefer an approach of Invective-and-Retreat and as such my posting style may not match your palette.

Vivisectus

And to add to my previous point about cultural mores:

If I should want to teach my child that bullying is not bad but merely represents the law of the jungle or something stupid like that, then society would intervene: in school my child would be taught that bullying is bad, fights would not be tolerated and even punished, and no-one really thinks that this would represent a major infringement of my right to teach my kid my own values.

But if we even get close to intervening in a religious teaching, such as the Catholic teachings on homosexuality, then despite the fact that we condemn bigotry as a society, this is all of a sudden a major infringement of freedom of religion. In fact, people will even deny that it constitutes bigotry at all! And to this day, catholic schools in Ireland can fire teachers for being gay.

Most Catholic schools deal with this by completely ignoring the subject, but my own kids were told that being gay was basically a disorder when they were in a catholic school.

Some behaviors are sheltered from criticism because they have to do with religion, and we accept them because we have been conditioned to give religious opinions and rules like this special status. How would a hospital react if I told them I wanted to cut of my newborns baby toe for philosophical reasons? There would be an outrage. But slice of a babies foreskin for religious reasons and people will practically sharpen the knives for you and hold the bandages while you do it.

The same applies to religious indoctrination. We accept far, far more from it than we normally would, just because it is done in the name of religion.

Peanut Butter Jelly

lazybones32 wrote: »

I'll save the good stuff for real debaters, not the monkeys.

Let me ask you a question so, how can we have a real debate, when you are just dismissive of us and not willing to put forward your side of the argument?

Piliger

Peanut Butter Jelly wrote: »

Let me ask you a question so, how can we have a real debate, when you are just dismissive of us and not willing to put forward your side of the argument?

To be honest I don't the 'dismiss' part is important. I dismiss lots of people here and their arguments - as do many others. What matters here is name calling imho.

Brian Shanahan

lazybones32 wrote: »

@ Vivisectus:

I found over 3 million hits but here's 1 of those 3,100,000, seeing as you can't do things yourself. http://www.mediawatchuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Summer-2012.pdf

Oh, yeah like quoting an organisation founded by Mary Whitehouse, that paragon of good taste annoyingly shrill killjoy, is going to impress any of us with your ability to view an issue with impartiality and make a decision based off the evidence available.

lazybones32

robindch wrote: »

Judging by the quality of your input so far, one can only conclude that you think everybody's a monkey.

Cut out the name-calling and try debate like an adult.

My apologies. It understand now that it was offensive to monkeys.

robindch

Lazybones is taking a week off to defulminate.

Vivisectus

It is always upsetting to be confronted with the fact that some of our strongest beliefs are sometimes founded on the narrowest of rational foundations. I know I have been at times.