I am about to ask a serious but utterly reprehensible question

[Whateverist]

I'm so disgusted with religious people right now, I can't even separate them from their faith.

Don't worry.  Many have tried but it just isn't that easy to do.  Even when you succeed they just whine about how unhappy they are and how much they miss their warm, cozy faith.  If you like a religious person leave them as they are, unless they try to start up an inquisition, crusades or witch burning.  But the peaceable ones can be safely left to live out their lives in their current state.

[robvalue]

I never understand the combination of claiming an omnipotent being is your pal, and that you're being unfairly persecuted. What the dickens? If I have twenty Michael Jordan's on my team, I'm not going to be whining if I start losing. I just won't ever be losing.

[Whateverist]

I never understand the combination of claiming an omnipotent being is your pal, but you're being unfairly persecuted. What the dickens?

Rob!  God doesn't 'persecute' his chosen, he tests them.  Like Job.  He was tested like a sonofabitch - and passed!

[AceBoogie]

Telling a child they'll be tortured for eternity if they don't follow some rules written thousands of years ago by men in a land far away is emotional child abuse. Period.

You're a piece of shit if you tell this to a kid. Period. I don't care how right or justified you think it is... it's wrong.

[robvalue]

If you have to tell them, let them get to like seven years old so they can learn how to think.

Then see them laugh in your face.

You know they would. That's why you have to attack the vulnerable young mind, isn't it? You bully. You damager of innocent minds.

[Astonished]

Drich, I am sick to fucking death of your incapability to understand that you are also using interpretation and a 'straight reading' of your equivalent of ancient toilet paper is literally impossible, the point being that you can justify whatever fucked-up things you do because the entire idea is irrational, hence why even YOU, a theist, can't convince another theist they are wrong about their interpretation or that X part of the bible is literal and Y part is allegorical. You are a textbook case of every intellectually dishonest tactic theists use in defense of their beliefs, and the psychological flaws created by having to look at the world believing two and two make five. I am truly sorry but you're going to need a better person than me to cure you. I've given you far too many chances to be intellectually honest for once in your life and it's just not happening. I think putting you on ignore is the best thing for both of us since I seem to be having the opposite effect and making you retreat further into your mania rather than making you see reason.

[SteveII]

[Astonished]

In what way is any of that relevant? If they're converting from other faiths then they're already dyed in the wool, so what's the real difference? Besides which, those are the kind of people who are going to end up making the decision about whether to subject their kids to this (or others' kids, FSM forbid). And if many of them have been subjected to that as children themselves, they can grow up believing it's the way to go about indoctrinating, and may have been a key factor in preventing their emancipation. Those facts don't address the problem here, maybe in some other thread.

[SteveII]

[Astonished]

I had been fairly sure that if indoctrination were to be completely halted, theism would die out in a generation, but now I'm not so optimistic. Still, even a 75% success rate would be massively instrumental in saving the world. Or if the shift were to reverse the proportion of believers to nonbelievers as it stands now, which I think is slightly less than that.