JCC God Exists.

Do you have some big logbook of cases showing where gay people were tortured to make them accept that homosexuality was wrong? Because I sort of just thought they accepted being told that as a child, before they had any terribly distinct sexual urges (or at least could make sense of them), and then later decided personally that the things they had been taught were untrue.

 

Who said anything about torture? That is an irrelevancy that you have injected into this conversation for God knows what reason in order to make the moral distinction you seem hellbent on making.

You have an annoying habit of falling back on simplistic thought patterns and simplistic moral distinctions when they confirm what you want to believe but also espousing complexity and ambiguity when it suits your argument.

 

Christian fundamentalism is clearly a weapon in the arsenal of POTENTIAL child abuse. My own mother's experience with her narcissistic amoral mother confirms that, for me at least. The omnipresent threats of damnation which amount to little more than unquestionable thought policing.

Christian indoctrination is not necessarily always ABUSIVE, but I would say that it is a very rare situation indeed when it is not a form of mind control, grosse or subtle as that form may take, ranging from strong social pressure to emotional blackmail.

 

I don't know EBB; if a kid was conditioned to believe in neo-Nazism and extremely racist, right wing views society might take the (reasonable) view that this is a form of abuse because of the conditioning. No matter how benign the intent is with religion it's still taking a young, impressionable mind and inducing compliance with a particular framework on pain of eternal suffering for non-compliance. It's the biggest-stake carrot and stick approach you can imagine; I can't see how it is anything but abusive.

I'm rather indifferent though to claims it's not intended that way. Taking Aboriginal children from their parents to settle them with white families and breed out their aboriginality was not intended as genocide either, yet it absolutely was.

 

Why are you randomly CAPITALIZING words?

Your approach to this whole issue seems strange. Neither end of the spectrum "strong social pressure to emotional blackmail" are terribly problematic. They are exactly the same range of reactions people have to normal disagreements over strongly felt issues. Once you've watered down the concept so much, I fail to see why anyone should care.

On the other hand, there is a body of clearly abusive, detrimental techniques that can be used to try and induce agreement. We have conventionally given these techniques labels like "torture" or "mind control." These are the ones that we should care about, because they are intrinsically damaging.

EDIT: You guys realize the English dictionary has words outside of "brainwashing" to describe the phenomena where someone teaches another person something you don't agree with?

 

Wha? Are you sure you're not an agnostic?

 

Sounds more like a Deist.

 

You mean responding to subjectivity - "ridiculous" claims - with more subjectivity, i.e. 'having faith'??

For the time being, I'll play along with the premise running through these boards that a religions' truth claims/propositions aren't true or false on their own merits, but whether someone finds the claims 'ridiculous' or not

Do all religions have equally 'ridiculous' claims? If not, can we 'grade' religions based on them? The one with the MOST 'ridiculous'claims is the LEAST LIKELY to be true, right?

Teaser question:

Is it Christianity (in ANY of it's forms or denominations) that marginalizes a particular gender not only in this lifetime, but EVEN IN THE AFTER-LIFE??? (this question touches not only upon the 'ridiculous' angle but also on the favorite one about 'fairness'* that skeptics often use - see 'theodicy').

* that's not fair!!!

Like when The State does it, right? I agree......


On the matter of 'coercion' and 'brain-washing' or 'indoctrination', I ask the same question:

Do the truth claims/propositions of a religion being true or false depend on whether it's precepts are propagated by coercion/indoctrination/brain-washing? Can we 'grade' religions based on whether they do this or not? For example, if a religion says that 'apostasy' or leaving the religion is a crime punishable by death , are the truth claims of that religion in doubt? i.e. "If it has the truth, would the threat of death for leaving be even necessary?"

(Note that I am NOT saying that these things would make the religion in question untrue)

Does Christianity make the above kind of rule regarding apostasy?

Should skeptics/atheists maybe re-think the 'all religions are equal' position that's favored by secular culture???

edit:

On 'burning Hell':

One MAJOR and extremely OLD Christian denomination does NOT teach a 'burning in HELL foreva!!" doctrine - The Greek Eastern Orthodox Church (The 'damned' will be in God's presence too, but they will hate it, basically. ) And they don't teach the 'atonement substitution' doctrine, that God could only save people from their sins by putting those sins on an innocent person - like Christ - and punishing him in our place. They believe that Christ saved us by taking on human nature, thus making humanity take part in 'Theosis', that is becoming more god-like.

 

What? Tosche you have actually sucked all sense out of the conversation and I feel soiled from reading the above.

 

Staying too long in atheist/skeptic echo-chambers will do that to you.
Maybe you would respond better to a Jack Chick tract???


part Two:

In terms of 'fairness' or theodicy, i.e. "Why would a good god allow X?" , I'm amazed at people on the boards having a problem with Christianity/The Bible/The Church based on those things, while at the same time idolizing a series of movies - Star Wars - where:

You might have been a good person your whole life, but if you die not belonging to the 'right' organization - i.e. aren't a Jedi - NO FORCE GHOST FOR YOU!!!!! But, if you did bad/evil deeds for 20 something years, but then saved your son right before you die.......BANG!! YOU GET A FORCE GHOST cuz you wur da Chozen One!!!

Yeah, that's 'fair'.

"why did the Force allow slavery in the Republic? That's not fair!"

"why did the Force allow Sith/Sidious to treacherously destroy most of the Jedi???!!!!"

"the Force is a big meannie!!! I am an A-Forceist!!!!"

 

I've always done that. Why do people suddenly care now? It is just a way to mimic speech by showing emphasis.

We will just have to agree to disagree then because your entire statement I just quoted sounds authoritarian and bat**** crazy to me.

That is not what is going on. I am interested in stripping away the pretense that the memetic propagation of Christianity does not involve coercion. I would argue that 10,000 other things we teach children involve coercion as well, but people don't get defensive over "which way to set the dinner table".

 

Wew, glad this is not a Senate thread.

 

It's close to that but he did say a god we couldn't know or comprehend. It sounds like a hybrid of the two. But it doesn't sound like an atheist.

 

You don't see the discrepancy between some Star Wars fans and how they judge SW versus how they judge religion in general or the Bible/Christianity in particular?

I've only been playing along - for the sake of argument - with the modern-day popular* premise that a religion's truth claims stand or fall based upon how one feels about them ('fairness'), or whether he or she finds the claims 'ridiculous', or whether people are indoctrinated into belief of said claims. I see a lot of hypocrisy and double-standards coming from a public that will do the above regarding 'traditional' religion, but will uncritically and naively buy into 'The DaVinci Code' and other Dan Brown offerings.

*or at least popular on internet forums or youtube.

 

In my earlier post I was going to put down that many things parents do would be considered coercive as well. But, when it comes to beliefs people take it more seriously.

 

But Star Wars does affect people in real life.

 

Star Wars IS real life. It is our world that is merely the illusion.

 

yeah then it would be really stupid and boring

 

Religion is fiction too. It's unfortunate that people take it so seriously.

 

Which is precisely why I don't judge the truth or falsity of a religion's claims based upon how the stories in it's holy book make me 'feel'. I don't conflate the truth of a claim with external matters such as aesthetics, or whether I was 'indoctrinated' to believe something (which I was not). That being the case, I'm being entirely consistent between my world-view on religion versus how I relate to SW.

anakinfansince1983, you and I agree pretty much about those aspects of SW. You're also being consistent with your beliefs, to boot.

 

Unnnecessary.