The anthropic principle.
If the Park ranger had not wondered by the man might have perished and not been able to tell the story of how he prayed to God and found a way out of the forest.
ETA: In other words… you will only ever hear the stories of the lost men who’s ‘prayers were answered’
Good analogy, especially when I think of all the wars fought and people burned because they liked the wrong flavor. “Confess strawberry is better or we’ll chop off your head!”
It was more a case of “if you want, you can say God had nothing to do with it and the park ranger would have happened by anyway.”
But if you check the rest of my previous post, you’ll know how much interest I have in prolonging the discussion. Score yourself one pooh-pooh point if you like. 
I could say the same thing about the Greeks. As a matter of fact, they have probably experienced more invasions, extermination in greater numbers, and assimilations than the Jews throughout history. Zeus has preserved his covenant people.
Did Zeus make any such covenant? Where is it recorded?
He was going to, really he was. It was just that this really good looking mortal caught his eye and well…he just didn’t quite get around to it.
Zeus was known as “the God of gods and men”. His covenant was favor in war,agriculture,and matters of state and culture. The Greek’s longevity as a surviving people with an intact language and culture after so many attempts at assimilation surely proves Zeus’s favor for his people.
The covenant was usually an invocation in animal sacrifice and burnt offerings. A fatty Liver was his favorite.
On the subject of ‘brainwashing’, I do feel that the repetition of the creeds and the general confession every week for sixteen years of my life were much more effective programming than the rather more haphazard presentation of dogma of various sorts by my parents or teachers. I’m an atheist through straightforward loss of faith, I don’t argue for or against the existence of a god or gods, I just am no longer able to believe, and yet if you put me in a church of my childhood denomination I experience a powerful irrational and strongly guilt-laden pull to set that all aside and go take communion and rejoin the church so I’ll be right with god again. It’s definitely weird.
Isn’t it everyone’s?
Liver is proof of Satan!
So what about the onions? HUH?
>Oh. For. God’s. Sakes.
>I am sick to death of people bleating on about ‘brainwashing’ children.It’s just ludicrous to keep on with this ‘brainwashing’ myth. Stop it.
My vote: religion is the most harmful part of humanity and has been for millenia. Children are especially vulnerable to it. Although the term “brainwashing” is subject to some interpretation, there are few more correct contexts in which to use it.
I don’t mind onions. They go well with cheese in crisps and sandwiches (in fact they convert a cheese sandwich into something I’m willing to eat… as do tomatoes)
Ahhh, but have you ever had an onion, tomato, braunschweiger, and mustard sandwich? It will pull your achilles tendon, make helen weep, and knock a titan straight dead with a lightning bolt.
Damn. Now I’m hungry. I haven’t had braunschweiger in years.
Yes, but did he or did he not ever tell the Greeks that they were his chosen people and that he would guarantee that their line would never fail, and if so, where?
Most things taught to children are not facts, even though they are presented as such, and it is rare that they are backed up by more evidence than “what has worked for us”. Most of what we teach children varies significantly from culture to culture and family to family. We teach them about what is right and what is good. We teach them about their relationship to their family, their community, their nation, the world. And to the Creator/s if we believe in one or many.
By your definition, this is all brainwashing, I suppose. And yet, just as with religion, people do it and are likely to keep on doing it. I would not like to imagine how one would parent children and not do it.
Your nieces have obviously been brainwashed into thinking that you have a special relationship with them which is important, and that this is good. Possibly their parents should have prevented them from knowing you at all until they were adults and could make up their own minds, as loyalty to notions of family has caused untold suffering in the course of human events. However, they did not and this dangerous mythos of the family continues unabated.
I’m coming back to this thread after missing it for a couple days. I have, apparently, a different read on this whole issue. It doesn’t seem to me to be a matter of religious freedom or expression, or the the rights of an atheist or a christian. It strikes me as an issue of manners. The rule that I keep coming back to in life, in dealing with political conservatives, religious people, or anyone with whom I disagree is this: Treat others as you would like to be treated.
Note that it isn’t “treat others as they treat you.”
Lobsang, if you were in a group of religious folk who were laughing about how ignorant you were to be an atheist, how you were going to obviously going to burn in hell (and it IS obvious to them), would you appreciate that? Would you want one of them to tell your child that their Daddy is doomed and going to hell?
IMHO, a lot of the crudeness in society today could be ended if we tried to treat others as we’d like to be treated, and not score points off each other (I speak to society as a whole in this comment, not to Lobsang in particular).
Perhaps more apropos, how would one wish a religious person related to your child describe their beliefs, when they differ from yours?