It's not math, science, history, or unraveling the mystery that all started with the Big Bang.

Better Sunday school than being brought up by drug addicted parents.

@Trajan61 Both are child abuse.

Mostly true. But if the adult is sufficiently ignorant, and the belief surrounds them suddenly...it can be done.

Sounds like you need some personal therapy. Why are you so angry?

@greyeyed123 because of the comments made by people that seriously want someone to hear their cries of poor poor pitiful me

@lookinhard Why would that make you angry?

@greyeyed123 because who the hell can be mad at people that told them truths? just re read my comments about Santa,Easter Bunny,etc.Are these people really so scarred by this that they have to blame religious beliefs for there trauma? For example...the person Linx minx starts her response by saying she knew of a Sunday school class that was taught by a pedophile.and then she adds.."at least I think he was a pedophile"...and then.." I attended a church that had a class led by a man that wasnt married and had no kids". You can read it yourself.Come on..."Ithink he was a pedophile"?..yeah,thats a good way to look at things.Go ahead and tell me how those comments are good for anyone ?

@lookinhard You seem to be very angry that some people, you claim, are having an inappropriate emotional response to experiences that were not really abuse.

But you are having an inappropriate emotional response to their response. If you believe what you say, extreme anger is not the appropriate emotional response (pity, sadness, etc., might be, but not anger). You therefore are angry about something else and projecting onto this.

@greyeyed123 no,I hate to go against your surely professional comment but I really have no deep seated problems that i need help with.I am simply stating that a person should have the internal strength to reach down,pull your boots up and just deal with the life that gets thrown at all of us.Find some pride in yourselves and don't blame shit on mommy and daddy and teachers and churches and whateve.In the clearest term I can think of..."GET A REAL LIFE AND STOP TRYING TO PLACE BLAME WHERE NO BLAME IS NEEDED"

@lookinhard I would suggest you think about why you are so angry. If you really think these people are not really damaged by "mommy and daddy and teachers and churches", then they just have a few screws loose and it is no matter to you. Getting furiously angry about it is a completely inappropriate response on the same level as your claim that they are having an inappropriate response to fake trauma. Why might it be that you do not want to see that?

@greyeyed123 I honestly have no more words to share with you Doctor.I am so glad that you can listen to people cry for no real reasons. God must have smiled on you !

@lookinhard If I believed that these people all are delusional about the harm caused them, I would not read their posts at all--or care. Becoming extremely angry and blowing up about it would make me question my response. Why would I be so angry about this? It is an interesting question to consider.

@greyeyed123 as I said earlier,I really have no more words to share with you.You apparently are not interpreting these comments as I do.Goodbye

@greyeyed123 actually..one last thing....How do you ok what the woman said about the sunday school teacher being a pedophile."well, i think he was a pedophile"was her comment.You see nothing wrong with that? A man is being talked about by someone that has no idea if he is or isnt a pedophile? You do belong here with her

@lookinhard Sometimes when I perceive someone is complaining about something, I think to myself that I have been through much worse and I made it. Why can't they? That makes me angry. And then I think to myself, well, why shouldn't we be trying to stop harmful things we can stop? What's the harm in trying to leave the place better than we found it, so others (especially children) do not have to go through what I went through? That makes me less angry and more constructive to problem solving.

@greyeyed123 peace out

@lookinhard Consider what I've said.

@greyeyed123 no thanx but i do appreciate the offer

@lookinhard Good luck being angry over nothing. (It's bad for your heart and blood pressure. Just sayin'.)

I was thinking the same thing reading the comments. I usually don't get into political discussions onlne, but the whiny, virtue signalling, victim culture we now have today is absolutely appalling. I miss seeing real conversations where honest people actually put some effort into seeing and respecting all opinions.

@nastynifty I thank ya for your words.I am so tired of "waa waa,poor poor pitiful me".If I went over the top,I apologize.Not really,I just refuse to allow the bullshit to keep piling up

how?

… abuse.

@TheMiddleWay I bet you could find someone raped by a priest, beaten by their parents, and homeless through their teens...who became a doctors and scientists also. Should we all be sure our children go through this to be just as successful?

Everyone sees what you are doing.

@TheMiddleWay And what are the numbers of people who didn't become doctors, nurses, teachers, go to college, or become a scientist because church made it seem useless if not downright evil.

@TheMiddleWay You made a claim about the number of doctors. The only way we can tell if your Sunday school has a net positive impact is to know the number of those whose path in life was derailed by religious belief. You need to provide those numbers to make your claim of a net positive.

@TheMiddleWay You are being dishonest again. You are arguing with data you do not have, and you already admitted correlation is not causation. (Doctors also want to put patients at ease, and in our society stating that you believe in god is the first step in doing that. The fact that it makes me cringe makes medical treatment awkward, however, lol.)

@TheMiddleWay

You: "In fact, given that the majority of scientists and medical doctors are religious,"
Me: Yes...?
You: "one could go so far as to say that there is a GREATER chance of taking these careers and being religious."
Me: You would go that far. Wow.
You: "I wouldn't go there because that is an example of correlation not being causation"
Me: So you WOULDN'T go that far. You would just float the idea as if it has merit, then take it back as if you didn't say it. How honest of you.

Me again: Moreover, scientists are not a majority theists. The same study you claimed show 76% of doctors as theists said only 39% of all scientists are theists. The most elite scientists, as we all know, are overwhelmingly atheists.

Me yet again: Moreover, the 76% number comes from 2000 questionnaires sent to doctors in 2005, where only 63% of them were returned. What solid data you have! Give me a break.

Me too yet again: Everyone sees what you are doing.

@TheMiddleWay The countries with the highest number of science degrees are South Korea, Germany, Sweden, and Finland. Would you like to dig into the numbers with me? lol I'm guessing not.

@TheMiddleWay

[web.archive.org]

National Academy of Sciences. The elite of the elite scientists. 93% atheists. "The percentage rises among professors and then again among professors at research universities, reaching 93 percent among members of the National Academy of Sciences. Unbelievers are to be found concentrated among those whose professional lives emphasize science or rationality."
[thenation.com]

@TheMiddleWay South Korea is overwhelmingly nonChristian. "Religion in South Korea is characterized by the fact that a majority of South Koreans (56.1%, as of the 2015 national census) have no formal affiliation with a religion or follow Korean folk religion. Among those who are members of a religious organisation, Protestantism represents (19.7%) of the total population, Buddhism (15.5%), and Catholicism (7.9%). A small percentage of South Koreans (0.8% in total) are members of other religions, including Won Buddhism, Confucianism, Cheondoism, Daesun Jinrihoe, Daejongism, Jeungsanism and Orthodox Christianity.[1]"

I can't find data on doctors' affiliations in South Korea. Or scientists. But not being Christian in this country seems to help you be number one in the world in science. Or maybe, according to your argument above, we should promote Korean folk religion as a society with such beliefs seems to generate the most scientists.

@TheMiddleWay Germany has gone from 2/3 Protestant and 1/3 Roman Catholic during Hitler's reign, to 1/3 atheist/agnostic. Certainly their number of scientists must have decreased in that time. NOT!

@TheMiddleWay Everyone knows Sweden's a bunch of godless heathens, so I need not citation for that. Maybe they are using devil magic to be number three in the world in science.

@TheMiddleWay The Finns numbers are similar to Germany's. As their atheism numbers went up, so did their scientists.

@TheMiddleWay Here's a map by state of quality of science education. I bet you can see a pattern.

[livescience.com]

@TheMiddleWay Regarding Sweden, you are being dishonest again. Tsk tsk.

[sweden.se]

"According to , Sweden is one of the least religious countries in the world, along with China, Japan, Estonia, Norway and the Czech Republic. Less than one in five Swedes claim to be religious, compared with, for example, more than half of the Americans."

You also failed to note that pre-2000, people became members of the Church of Sweden...by BEING BORN!

@TheMiddleWay No one is a good scientist by virtue of being religious.

scientist is doing science they are not doing religion.
when a scientist comes to the end of his understand that's when he invokes the hand of God.
Galileo did it. Einstein did it, Harkins did it , and Newton did it.
we call this the god of the gaps.
you substitute the word God for nature it all makes sense.

@TheMiddleWay They are atheistic in the sense that they never start with the assumption that god is messing with their experiments.

People ARE being a bad scientist if they think they can prove the earth is 6000 years old, or that there was a global flood, etc. And there are self-described "scientists" who think they can and are doing this. They are, by virtue of their religious beliefs, bad scientists.

@TheMiddleWay "Being religious isn't a 100% full time job: even the pope has to shit and not thank god for it once in a while!"

It's good to know even the Pope doesn't take his religion seriously all the time, and it's good to know at least you think all believers drop their beliefs when they think it is necessary to get serious about something. It warms my heart.

"not unlike bad scientists that claim we live in a computer simulation or that claim science disproves gods."

I don't know anything about the computer simulation claims other than it sounds nutty to me, but in terms of science disproving gods, that isn't hard to do if you accept methodological naturalism and the god is well defined. You accept this also, as you GAVE me evidence that Thor doesn't exist. The same kind of evidence exists that most kinds of gods people believe in don't (and in some cases, can't) exist.

Why are you defending beliefs you don't even have? ...or do you?

many of the Great scientists were also religious, Newton was a deist, Einstein was a Jew,
and Fermi what's a Catholic.
what they have in common was when they were doing science they weren't doing religion.
science is a belief that we can figure out nature, religion is a belief that the supernatural reveal itself but never be understood.
when a scientist comes to the level of their understanding that's when they invoke the hand of God. we call this the god of the gaps. when Newton have no hypothesis for the mechanism of gravity he called it the hand of God.
when Stephen Hawking sad at the end of his book" we will continue to learn so that we will know the mind of God"
they were not referring to the god Jehovah they were referring to the god of nature.
in fact if you substitute the word God for nature it all works out.

@TheMiddleWay But you ARE defending the position of not defending either one, and very aggressively, even when there is flimsy or no evidence, even when you are just making claims and not doing the most cursory of research. Why? Is it just fun trolling?

@TheMiddleWay You are defending the position that theism and atheism (by your definitions) should both be rejected, and you are defending that position aggressively and often dishonestly.

And teaching can be abusive, depending on how you do it and what you are teaching. I know. I am a teacher.

I still do not know what your purpose is. Every time you claim a purpose, that purpose is so milquetoast that it cannot possibly be the motivation for you to respond so often and so aggressively. Why don't you start a thread discussing physics, etc? You seem completely uninterested in the things you are supposed to be educated in, you have far too much time to waste here if you are actually so highly educated, and I have no idea why a person with such an education as yourself would waste so much time defending what amounts to basically a neutral position on an issue you claim even by its teachers and advocates doesn't really care about Jesus, hell, god, or any core element of the philosophy of the belief.

So what does it matter to you, and why are you responding so aggressively to positions that would not really matter to one holding the position you claim to hold?

@TheMiddleWay So what is your motivation to continue to respond to me? My motivation in responding to you is that I don't believe you have revealed your true motivation, and I'm curious what it is. Your putative motivation is not adequate to explain your behavior here.

@TheMiddleWay That is not sufficient to explain your behavior. Also "English" is a language, and all names of languages in English are capitalized. And I have discussed issues related to my expertise many times on this site. I am interested in the subject I am educated and experienced in.

Are you not interested in the subject you are educated and experienced in?

finally,something resembling common sense.It seems that just because we call ourselves agnostics it gives us the right to completely denegrate any and all forms of religion.How in the hell could call sunday school child abuse.We need to reign our shit in and remember we were built with one of our beliefs being freedom of religion.

@lookinhard Thank you. I haven't heard it used before, but I like your phrase "reign our shit in", it's catchy and makes sense in this case.

In my view all religious education should be absolutely prohibited under the age of 18 or 21. For adults - go knock yourself out!

@zesty It may be inappropriate to teach certain things to young minds but abusive I don't know if I would go that far. May be more ignorant. Parents make decisions for their children all the time and some may not be the best informed decisions. If the kids were indoctrinated with hate, bigotry, violence, etc. then I can see that it's abusive, especially if the kids are subjected to violence as well if they don't follow the teachings. I'm sure some Sunday schools are like this. Granted there are a lot of examples of violence in the bible which children should not be exposed to. When I was a small child, Sunday school was more like daycare when my parents were in church. We sang and coloured pictures. We played games. I personally did not feel like it was abuse (although having to wake up early on a Sunday and go to a "school" when I went to academic school Monday to Saturday already felt like abuse). I was allowed to disagree or question what I was taught. May be it's different with Catholics or Fundamentalist churches but I felt like I had a lot of freedom and choice (my family is Protestant/Presbyterian). Other people's experiences may be different. Did I feel harmed in any way by having gone to Sunday school? No, not really.

I remember crying hysterically when I investigated Santa's existence, discovering all my presents from "Santa" in my parents' closet (written in my mother's handwriting, which I had never noticed in previous years).

Man, I loved that Jolly Ol' dude.

and just how badly are the kids traumatized when they realize all those things don't exist? I am at a loss trying to think of ONE FUCKING HUMAN that is having troubles in their life because they are now aware the easter bunny doesnt exist. I fear that my time on Agnostic is dwindling rapidly.I was under the impression that the majority of us on here had SOME intelligence.Rather doubting it lately.

@lookinhard [alternet.org]

@lookinhard it's not that kids were damaged by learning that Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy or imaginary friends not existing. The messed up part is continuing to brainwash kids into believing that God , Jesus and them still exist but never sees them

It's not just in the DNA, but also the fact that children don't know anything. They need adults to tell them how to do things, navigate the world, other people, their own emotions, etc. When adults give them dysfunctional advice, problems accumulate while everyone is supposed to pretend they have been solved. Lying, cheating, and stealing may have worked for Trump, but he started off with 430 million dollars. If we start of with zero, and head down a path of lying, cheating, and stealing, then our family hates us, our friends abandon us, we have no job, no money, and end up in jail.

I think that is too simplistic. It is like the difference between "brain washing" and "cognitive restructuring". In cognitive restructuring, one uses the Socratic method to examine one's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors...and if the outcomes of those are objectively desirable or not. Teaching your children how to think using reason and evidence does NOT guarantee they will always agree with you. Teaching your children that Jesus is the answer to all your problems is teaching them WHAT to think, but not how.

@greyeyed123 In my experience most parents try to teach their children what to think more than how to think. But that really doesn't answer the question posed by poll. I guess the point I was trying to make is that just because you think something is a form of abuse what gives you authority to say it is actually abuse. We often come to the general consensus that x y or z is abuse because most other humans feel that way too. But does the majority feeling really constitute morality?

@greyeyed123 We'll, the elenchus methodology. Sometimes, in a twistex way, it is even used by the scumbag priests, mullahs!

@GrnArrow The only way you come to any conclusion--with reason and evidence.