Why Even A Child May Choose To Reject Christianity (Video)

By vulcan on July 11, 2011 in News 42

Anonymous

Is that the girl who played Hermoine(?) in harry potter? It doesnt look that old to me, but the little girl sure looks like her.
Anonymous

Kids accept all kinds of stupid things, not much difference between saying she’s a satanist or a christian when she’s not truly capable of understanding either.
AboutTime

Exactly! And this is why I believe that indoctrinating children with religion should be illegal. You could have a class taught in school about the history of all religions: the similarities and differences, the impacts (both positive and negative) which they have had. Then, when the kids are legally adults, they can choose whether or not they want to become involved with a particular religious belief. That is the world I want to live in.
baby jesus

parents have kids for egotistical reason most of the time. its their own to shape their fleeting grip on true power.
nostalgia

church sucked i rejected it when i was like 12 and lost a lot of money because of that but gained a lot of coolness.
Anonymous

That’s a good idea..the class bit. However, making it illegal for parents to indoctrinate their kids will never happen. Whether they like it or not, kids will grow up conditioned by parents, society, the media, whatever..because kids are vulnerable to anything.
Kochevnik

So what do YOU think about Ezekiel 4:12 ‘God’ instructing people to eat human shit:

Ezekiel 4:12 ~
And thou shalt eat it [as] barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to
speak these words? [hath he] not [sent me] to the men that sit upon the
wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? – <>
Anonymous

“she’s not truly capable of understanding either.”

Uhhh and this has WHAT to do with being a child? Adults are large children with “responsibilities”, worries and woes.
The only difference is size and sexual appetite. Children ask simple, straight questions to which adults, often enough, have no clue to the answers.

Most adults don’t deserve the respect they demand from children. Parenthood is the original tyranny from which all tyranny springs. ”Out of the mouths of babes often come gems” is true indeed and true more often than most adult care to admit. The blind lead the small but sighted, with might not sight.
Anonymous

Yeah, make another law. That’ll fix everything. We’ll just bypass the tyranny of parenthood in favor of the tyranny of government. Big brother knows what’s best.

I agree, “indoctrinating children with religion” generally sucks, but your solution is idiotic. Education might be a start, but who will write this approved “history” you speak of? Religious sources? Pure academia? Unbiased atheists?
Ludicrous.

People, children will form there own opinions, beliefs etc. when and if they choose to do so. This fact will never change. The world you want to live in is a nightmare and in case you haven’t noticed we’re living it already to some degree.
Nuggett

You said : “And this is why I believe that indoctrinating children with religion should be illegal.”
Seriously?? I’m no huge fan of religion, but what was our nation founded on again?? Freedom FROM religious control in the hands of the government. The government should NEVER be allowed to decide what parents teach kids in regard to religious practices, no matter how vehemently we disagree with their beliefs.

It’s absolutely insane that 4 people liked your post.
AboutTime

“but who will write this approved “history” you speak of?” It could and should be written by agnostics…the only people on this spinning rock of craziness who don’t have a clear bias or agenda except for: “Why can’t we all just get along?” Fundamental atheists are just as frothing and unreasonable as fundamental Xians. At least agnostics could give an honest answer to a child by saying: “We don’t know. And that’s okay. Because it doesn’t ultimately matter. We are here, regardless, and we must make the most of the time we have been given.” If that is “idiotic” and/or “ludicrous” then I would sincerely like to hear you come up with something more plausible. I survived indoctrination by a fundamentalist cult and while some might argue that I am a stronger person for having come through the other side, I would argue that it was an unnecessarily traumatizing experience that set my life back for eighteen years.
AboutTime

“We’ll just bypass the tyranny of parenthood in favor of the tyranny of government…” At this point in our cultural evolution, I believe that parental licenses are absolutely necessary. When a boy hits puberty, tie his tubes (but not before he donates a few sperm samples to a local bank). Then, when potential parents believe that they are ready, they apply for a license. They take a test. Their background is reviewed: finances, income, criminal history, drug use, mental illness, etc. Just because you don’t pass the test the first time does not mean you can’t take it again at some point in the future. This would solve overpopulation which would impact our consumption of natural resources which would positively impact the environment. Call it “tyranny” if you want but that does not mean it would not work. Sometimes people need to be told what to do…please don’t expect me to lose sleep over it or feel bad about it, considering the extraordinarily negative impact we have had on this planet and for all of the other species who have to live here with us. Maybe once we get our shit together we will be allowed to join the Galactic Federation but I guarantee you it won’t happen before then.
AboutTime

This nation was founded by slave-fuckers. The world would be a lot more calm, rational and sane if children were actually allowed to grow up without the tyranny of religion being forced upon them. Should they decide to choose it for themselves later on in life, fine. But at least it would be their choice. Their freedom is being taken away from them by not being given that choice. Put that in your “insane” pipe and smoke it.
Curtis7676

I hate watching little kids act…and watching adults act w them is even worse…
AboutTime

“The world you want to live in is a nightmare and in case you haven’t noticed we’re living it already to some degree.” I have not noticed. Please explain…?
DeepCough

I disagree, that little Briton’s argument against Christianity was quite eloquent.
Anonymous

Parental licences? Try to implement that and we’ll have population control all right. More war….

Your a fuckin’ madman.
Anonymous

“ I would sincerely like to hear you come up with something more plausible”

You already have….a reprint fer ya……”children will form there own opinions, beliefs etc. when and if they choose to do so”. This is true regardless of their previous indoctrination. It’s called free will.

No new laws needed.
AboutTime

“This is true regardless of their previous indoctrination. It’s called free will” I would be curious to see an alternate reality where everything is the exact same, except that the people there were never force-fed any particular belief. How many of the Xians from our reality would still be Xians in that one? Muslims? Jews? And so on and so forth. I suspect their world would be practically unrecognizable compared to our own.
AboutTime

“This is true regardless of their previous indoctrination. It’s called free will” I would be curious to see an alternate reality where everything is the exact same, except that the people there were never force-fed any particular belief. How many of the Xians from our reality would still be Xians in that one? Muslims? Jews? And so on and so forth. I suspect their world would be practically unrecognizable compared to our own.
AboutTime

I will be the first to admit that it will never happen, even though I firmly believe that it would be within the best interest of our species and the rest of the planet. It is a thought-experiment and it raises legitimate social/cultural issues, whether you agree with them or not. And I delight in being called a madman, for the line between madness and genius is often indistinguishable.

Another thought-experiment with interesting social/cultural ramifications: since it is unlikely that we will ever be able to legally ban parents from indoctrinating their children with religion, what if we gave children the choice/right to sue their parents and/or divorce their parents should they feel/believe that they are being abused as a direct result of their parent’s attempted indoctrination?

In other words, it is my argument that religious indoctrination can lead to severe mental/emotional/psychological damage which can be incredibly difficult to recover from. (Also, in some cases, the harm of indoctrination is physical, as with cults who preach that you cannot go to a doctor for medical assistance, but must rely instead on prayer and faith.)

I would find such a law to be an acceptable compromise, as it would give children and young people a valuable resource which they do not currently possess.
AboutTime

I will be the first to admit that it will never happen, even though I firmly believe that it would be within the best interest of our species and the rest of the planet. It is a thought-experiment and it raises legitimate social/cultural issues, whether you agree with them or not. And I delight in being called a madman, for the line between madness and genius is often indistinguishable.

Another thought-experiment with interesting social/cultural ramifications: since it is unlikely that we will ever be able to legally ban parents from indoctrinating their children with religion, what if we gave children the choice/right to sue their parents and/or divorce their parents should they feel/believe that they are being abused as a direct result of their parent’s attempted indoctrination?

In other words, it is my argument that religious indoctrination can lead to severe mental/emotional/psychological damage which can be incredibly difficult to recover from. (Also, in some cases, the harm of indoctrination is physical, as with cults who preach that you cannot go to a doctor for medical assistance, but must rely instead on prayer and faith.)

I would find such a law to be an acceptable compromise, as it would give children and young people a valuable resource which they do not currently possess.
Anonymous

If you somehow magically prevented any aspect of religion, you’d have exactly what we have today. The vast majority of Americans were not raised in particularly religious homes, yet we have a surge of religious activity, why? Because whether it’s in our DNA or what have you, we’re hungry for religiosity and spirituality. Likely, they’d create some nonsensical mishmash of religion that wouldn’t work nearly as well as the religions themselves work cohesively.

Even if the kid was somehow impervious to being educated as a christian just because his parents were, for example, he would still be interested in Christianity because he knows that’s what his parents are and would conceive of it as being his heritage and would be influenced into it anyhow, so you’d have to take him away from his parents and raise him in a non-religious bubble. FYI, that’s been done, they kidnapped kids all the time in the USSR from their parents to make sure they wouldn’t be exposed to religion (until the church bribed the government off leaving the Jews to get the worst of it).
Anonymous

If you somehow magically prevented any aspect of religion, you’d have exactly what we have today. The vast majority of Americans were not raised in particularly religious homes, yet we have a surge of religious activity, why? Because whether it’s in our DNA or what have you, we’re hungry for religiosity and spirituality. Likely, they’d create some nonsensical mishmash of religion that wouldn’t work nearly as well as the religions themselves work cohesively.

Even if the kid was somehow impervious to being educated as a christian just because his parents were, for example, he would still be interested in Christianity because he knows that’s what his parents are and would conceive of it as being his heritage and would be influenced into it anyhow, so you’d have to take him away from his parents and raise him in a non-religious bubble. FYI, that’s been done, they kidnapped kids all the time in the USSR from their parents to make sure they wouldn’t be exposed to religion (until the church bribed the government off leaving the Jews to get the worst of it).
Anonymous

If you somehow magically prevented any aspect of religion, you’d have exactly what we have today. The vast majority of Americans were not raised in particularly religious homes, yet we have a surge of religious activity, why? Because whether it’s in our DNA or what have you, we’re hungry for religiosity and spirituality. Likely, they’d create some nonsensical mishmash of religion that wouldn’t work nearly as well as the religions themselves work cohesively.

Even if the kid was somehow impervious to being educated as a christian just because his parents were, for example, he would still be interested in Christianity because he knows that’s what his parents are and would conceive of it as being his heritage and would be influenced into it anyhow, so you’d have to take him away from his parents and raise him in a non-religious bubble. FYI, that’s been done, they kidnapped kids all the time in the USSR from their parents to make sure they wouldn’t be exposed to religion (until the church bribed the government off leaving the Jews to get the worst of it).
Anonymous

Her mental capacity and experience have not reached the point where her religious views should be of any significance to anyone. I’ve talked with kids who are Christian, Jewish etc, and once in a while I’ll just throw a question out, what does God look like? Where is God? Can you draw a picture? In the religious understanding, God is generally infinite, indescribable, omnipresent, what have you. The kid will very often simply draw a picture of a little man standing on a cloud in the sky. Kids simply don’t grasp the bigger concepts at all.
Anonymous

How is it relevant what I think? What do you think? Do you seriously think there aren’t literally libraries full of information on each verse in the bible? What sort of understanding do you want to talk about? Religious? Literary? Historical? Jewish? Christian? Or what some uneducated undeveloped pretentious child thinks?

Frankly, I really don’t care for the latter, and most people have a childish understanding that they never grew out of because they never bothered to develop their understanding. There are plenty of real problems/questions in the bible, but people who are anti-bible or atheist or what have you because they don’t know how to read literature, i.e. kids and adults with the mindset of kids, are not worth listening to about the bible or religion in general. I don’t think you have to believe in the bible to understand that the bible is not a childish work to be carelessly analyzed with out of context quotes anymore than Shakespeare.

So FYI:
Both quotes that you brought are about the siege of Jersualem, the capital city of Judah. In Ezekiel, it’s a prophetic vision, God is not instructing people to go out and eat shit, but he is telling Ezekiel to eat shit representative of the punishment he’s going to bring on the Jews later. It’s fulfilled in the more historical account of Isaiah in which Rabshakeh is a messenger of the Assyrians taunting the Jews on how they will be destroyed and laughs at how people are starving to death and eating shit.

This would take you literally 5 minutes to look up in a bible to simply understand the very basics of what the bible is talking about there, without even going into any advanced level of interpretation.
Nuggett

It’s not that I disagree with you on the “tyranny of religion.” That’s not the point.

The point is, you brought up legality and espouse government intervention on the subject.

That’s one fat BLUNT of insanity. One that King George III could and did get high on.
AboutTime

What about giving kids the right to sue and/or divorce their parents for damages inflicted during the course of indoctrination?
AboutTime

“[the kid] would still be interested in Christianity because he knows that’s
what his parents are and would conceive of it as being his heritage and
would be influenced into it anyhow” Have you read Island by Aldous Huxley? He presents a fascinating idea: a community where kids are free to go from home to home as they see fit, with no one set of permanent or fixed parents. Every adult within the community functions as a parental figure who nurtures and educates. That way, the kids are exposed to numerous ways of thinking and feeling and being. There are many other revolutionary ideas presented within the book…cannot recommend it highly enough

“FYI, that’s been done, they kidnapped kids all the time in the USSR
from their parents to make sure they wouldn’t be exposed to religion” That sounds like a good idea to me. But instead of calling it “kidnapping”, I would call it “being removed from the home”. And what about the kids who would willingly volunteer to be removed from such a situation? I would have thanked the adults who came in and rescued me.
Anonymous

I love Aldorus Huxley, but in reality the Island is more of a pipe dream. In reality, no one parent having any control over a kid means no one has control over the kid. Kids need structure, rules, discipline, and kids that lack that generally end up much worse off. Just the same, parents who have raised their child to be multi-cultural very often end up with a kid who is incredibly confused and doesn’t know where he really belongs, and he ends up clinging to the broadest things that the American culture determines are good for people like they’re an ideology. I have plenty of friends like this and they wish they had an identity they could call their own because being “American” can’t fulfill those needs beyond that shallow level.

If you didn’t notice, the biggest problem with taking kids away from perfectly good parents simply because they want to give their religion to their kids is the precedent it comes from and that which it sets. You kidnap kids away from religion, someone steals your kids because they don’t like your political alignment, and the next guy kidnaps someone else’s kids because of religion, etc. It’s just as bad as religious/political persecution.
AboutTime

“parents who have raised their child to be multi-cultural very often end
up with a kid who is incredibly confused and doesn’t know where he
really belongs” This is where I lose all sympathy and become extremely frustrated. We are all human beings and we are all stuck together on this spinning rock of insanity. To say that you are “Chinese” simply because you were born on a chunk of land that someone named China or that you are a “Muslim” simply because your parents raised you as such…these are all meaningless descriptions which we have made up…they don’t matter and they aren’t necessary and they aren’t helping anyone. If we – as a species – want to not only survive but thrive, then we need to put aside these petty and insignificant differences and come together as one race, united. And this really freaks the fuck out of some people because they are so small-minded as to be unable to imagine a world where no such labels existed. A world where we fight poverty and hunger and disease instead of fighting each other. What a heinous idea, right?

“the biggest problem with taking kids away from perfectly good parents
simply because they want to give their religion to their kids is the
precedent it comes from and that which it sets” Again, I would argue that there are a number of children and young people who would more than willingly opt out of such situations if they could in fact do so without fear of repercussion from the offending adults. And if the kids are too scared to leave until they are legally adults, they should be able to turn around and press charges against their parents at that time. Their rights have been violated…their choice has been taken away. They should – at the very least – be given the chance to seek legal justice and retribution.
Nuggett

I’d see no problem with that and would encourage a child’s (or adult’s) actions if there was sufficient damaging evidence to corroborate the claims.

Of course, if a kid viewed his or herself as “indoctrinated”, I’d say it was a pretty big fail for the fundamentalist parents and would wonder why the kid was suing if he didn’t believe it to begin with.

Semantics… I think we could consent on “emotional damages” brought on by religious oppression.
Nuggett

I’d see no problem with that and would encourage a child’s (or adult’s) actions if there was sufficient damaging evidence to corroborate the claims.

Of course, if a kid viewed his or herself as “indoctrinated”, I’d say it was a pretty big fail for the fundamentalist parents and would wonder why the kid was suing if he didn’t believe it to begin with.

Semantics… I think we could consent on “emotional damages” brought on by religious oppression.
AboutTime

I just read this quote on H+ (Valkyrie Ice Review of Hank Hyena’s “Inventing Utopia” E-Book) and found it to be extremely interesting and thought-provoking: “And in the end, I have to satisfy myself that it [parental licensing] will become a moot
issue in the near future when we create the ability to reversibly
sterilize ourselves to prevent any possible accidental pregnancies
unless BOTH PARTIES voluntarily chose to deliberately create a child.” That sounds like an excellent solution…a win-win for everyone
AboutTime

I just read this quote on H+ (Valkyrie Ice Review of Hank Hyena’s “Inventing Utopia” E-Book) and found it to be extremely interesting and thought-provoking: “And in the end, I have to satisfy myself that it [parental licensing] will become a moot
issue in the near future when we create the ability to reversibly
sterilize ourselves to prevent any possible accidental pregnancies
unless BOTH PARTIES voluntarily chose to deliberately create a child.” That sounds like an excellent solution…a win-win for everyone
AboutTime

“I think we could consent on “emotional damages” brought on by religious oppression” Absolutely! Now we just need to find a politician with enough emotional honesty and intellectual integrity to sponsor such a law…LOL
AboutTime

“I think we could consent on “emotional damages” brought on by religious oppression” Absolutely! Now we just need to find a politician with enough emotional honesty and intellectual integrity to sponsor such a law…LOL
Anonymous

You’re aware it’s a sitcom right? She’s acting; reciting lines written by an adult. I’m talking about kids in general. Sitcom writers have a way of giving children adult thoughts to make a point, but it’s not representative of reality. Not that her arguments really had all that much to do with Christianity.
Anonymous

Looks like she could be her younger sister, but they have kind of different accents so yeah.
ashley_falls

Where did this video come from? Is it an English sitcom or something? That kid is hilarious.
Tuna Ghost

It could and should be written by agnostics…the only people on this spinning rock of craziness who don’t have a clear bias or agenda except for: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

This shows a profound misunderstanding of religion and people in general.