If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.
- House
Al-Qaida leader calls for holy war on US and Israel over anti-Islamic film: Seriously? The leader of a radical Islamic group chooses to dignify a ridiculously inept attempt at cinematography by calling on the faithful to conduct a holy war? I suppose if you live in an autocratic, inflexible world, the concept of freedom of speech and expression is generally lost on you. Never mind that you just dignified something truly absurd by granting it a power out of all proportion with what it warrants.
Of course, al-Zawahiri has no issue at all with Muslim burning American flags or chanting “Death to America!” or something similar. No hypocrisy here, people; move along….
One more question: What sort of a religion celebrates the shooting of a 14-year-old girl…and promises to do it again? If you think your flavor of God condones that sort of inhumanity, you’ve forfeited any right to think of yourself as an enlightened human being…and your “religion” is pure Evil.
If I could have a face-to-face with al-Zawahiri, I’d try to make a deal. If he stops milking every cheap opportunity to gin up outrage and manipulate the easily manipulable, we’ll see what we can do about stupid, no-talent hacks making bad movies about Islam, ‘kay??
Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong: When did it become acceptable for tax-exempt religious organizations to engage in political indoctrination of children in the name of religion? How reprehensible is it when those religious organizations exploit the vulnerability of children in order to push their own narrow theological/political agenda?
Instead of providing options, groups like the Salvation Army are primarily concerned with “saving souls,” or convincing children that, unless they accept the point of view being taught, they’re liable to burn in Hell forever. Scare the kiddies into obedience before they learn to think for themselves, and you have a Conservative Christian for life, eh?
Why are religious organizations so afraid that children may make the “wrong” choice? Something’s horribly wrong when you fear rational thought, when you despise critical thinking to the point where you feel compelled to engage in what can only be described as propagandizing children.
So many Christian religious organizations fear that children will make other choices about their preferred religion/ideology if they’re provided with information about anything but their flavor of Christianity. In so doing, they engage in all manner of cheap, unvarnished propaganda designed to keep children from thinking and asking “uncomfortable” questions, the answer to which might result in them making “wrong” choices.
If you feel that you must manipulate and propagandize children early to keep them from making solid, considered decisions about what they believe, your ideas suck.
The Littlest Missionaries: A New Christian Plot to Invade Public Schools: As if religious organizations engaging in what can only be described as the religious indoctrination and manipulation of young people isn’t bad enough, there’s a strategy that’s even more reprehensible in its aims.
Fundamentalist Christian groups like Every Student Every School have developed a strategy that allows them to proselytize in public schools by using children to spread their message. I can think of few things more evil and wicked than manipulating children and using them to manipulate other children.
“We must help our teenagers get serious about sharing their faith with those God has place in their lives,” an article on the ESES website advises. According to ESES’s Campus Prayer Guide, evangelical Christian students are in a “strategic position” to proselytize “unchurched” peers, and advises these students to “consider every school a PRAYER ZONE.”
If you’re so afraid that your belief system will be rejected by children once they’re old enough to think for themselves, if you think that children must be converted, or “saved,” before they learn how to think critically and ask questions, your ideas and your religion sucks. If your belief system can’t stand up to questioning and examination, you need to seriously re-examine those beliefs.
Christianity is not the problem; it’s adults who evidently are so uncertain of the strength and durability of their belief system that they feel compelled to indoctrinate children before they learn to think for themselves. There are few things more reprehensible and disturbing than engaging in the manipulation and propagandizing of vulnerable children. If you have to teach them that critical thinking and the honest examination of their beliefs is a sign of moral weakness and evidence that they’re going to Hell, you have no business having anything to do with children.
