Are you under the impression that keeping your nose out of other people’s parenting decisions is something to be ashamed of?
I’m glad the girl stood up for herself, and I think the parents made a dumb decision, and I even think it was ok for Skald to tell them so, but for fuck’s sake, there’s no crime in staying out of their business if he wanted to.
Well, fortunately for her, he didn’t. She’s just a kid and undoubtedly could use a little support in the face of her parents’ twisted reaction.
My question was asked and answered. And, no, I don’t think it’s a crime, but it certainly would have been an unfortunate missed opportunity to reinforce the girl’s honesty and integrity.
My family was non-practicing Protestant. From ages 10 to 12 I went to Bible camp (atheist since 5th grade). The first 2 summers it was actually fun. The religious content consited of pledging allegiance the “Christian flag” in the morning and a nightly chapel service which consisted mostly of singing “Christianized” versions of pop songs (eg Pharaoh , Pharaoh instead of Louie, Louie). The pastor the church that we all nominally belonged too (but only my grandparents actually attended) served as director. My 3rd year an new husband/wife pastor team took over. Total fundies. They took everychance they could to convince us to “accept Jesus as your personal savior”. They worked crap stuff like “the enviromentalist movement is inspired by paganism” into nature walks. At a bonfire they had one of the teenage counselors break down in tears about how she once tried to commit suicide and suddenly “Christ saved her”. The pastors wife at one point went out into the middle of the lake in a canoe and tried to convince me to “accept Jesus”. I declined. Needless to say I never went back following summers and that was the last time I ever bothered to fake prayer or belief.
I wish I’d thought to say that yestereve.
Somehow I get the feeling the opportunity will come up again.
A two-week grounding for expressing doubt about Jesus? In a Pentecostal church? In front of God and everybody? I can’t defend it but the punishment could have been a lot worse. Are you sure Steve and Lynn are really Pentecostal? Maybe they have some doubts themselves. 
Religion, mostly.
Poor Jess. Good on you and Mrs. Rhymer for giving the kid some support. My mother rather abruptly re-found religion when I was about sixteen and already well into agnosticism that bordered on atheism. Her strong-arming me into going to church every Sunday for the next couple of years tipped me over the edge and I haven’t had as much respect for her since.
If you could manage to get a list of her books that were confiscated and/or trashed, I’m sure I’m not the only one here who’d be willing to help replace them.
That concept is straight from the Bible. Essentially it boils down to: “God’s gonna smite yer ass with Hellfire until you accept His infinite Love and Forgiveness!!”
So, Jess’s parents are treating Jess exactly as God treats his “children”. Can’t people see that there’s no way out of this irrational and destructive mess until the whole joke is revealed to all? (Or maybe it’s the punchline that needs to be revealed…)
Maybe it goes like this:
*“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“You are born.”
“You are born, and then what?”
“You die.”*
But I’m sure there are many variations.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
I hope some kids were looking the counselor in the eye and saying: “Okay, whatever. Look, here’s the deal. You’re going to mark down in your book or tell your boss or however you keep track that I did the whole acceptance thing, or I’m going to go running out of these woods crying about how you touched me. Capisce?”
Unfortunately, this is actually very common. The sad truth is most people believe in this ridiculous nonsense, and a lot of them force it on their children in unhealthy ways.
Religion is a terrible, terrible thing.
Fortunately, I’m not cursed with parents who insist on me worshipping imaginary beings, and neither will be my children.
Religion is not a terrible thing. All supernatural elements aside, religion is a human thing. Humans are sometimes terrible entities.
That said, as a reasonably intelligent conservative Christian, I’m on Jess’s side- of course I’d like for her to come to a trust in God/Jesus, but a thoughtful trust.
Sheesh. And some Christians wonder about the rise in unbelief & neo-paganism.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m sorry, but huge numbers of people believing in false things which frequently lead to acts of hideous violence and inhumanity just doesn’t strike me as being a positive thing. I appreciate that not all religious people are evil, but it certainly seems to contribute to the amount fo evil people are capable of.
I agree it may be intrinsically human, but so is diabetes and I’d like to see that gotten rid of too.
But it’s a free country.
I see it as giving these people an excuse for their evil. If they didn’t have religion to pin it on, they would find some other reason.
Elysium, I think I’m you, too. I put off the atheist talk until the beginning of confirmation classes, but I couldn’t stand up and lie to the whole community, either. First there was carrying on and tears, then there was awkwardness, and then my mom insisted that I finish out confirmation classes and go to the religious retreat “because I already paid for it”. And because one more year of peer pressure would definitely help me see the light.
In the end wasted two hours every week sitting in class, wrote a non-confirmation note to the archbishop, and basically proved that I wasn’t an atheist just out of laziness. I went to the retreat, awkward-ized the tone of all the “why I’m a Christian” discussions by being honest, and wandered around in the woods with a friend or two all weekend ridiculing the camp’s little creationist nature center. (Yeah, my Catholic church rented the retreat center from a bunch of fundamentalists.)
In retrospect, I wonder why my instructor thought it was a good idea to keep me around.
The big surprise at the retreat was that the parents had all sent us personal letters. Most of my friends had rather sweet, proud, loving notes and flowers and sand dollars and things. I got a literal “come to Jesus” letter from my mom, warning me that I was going to go completely downhill if I was tempted with moral relativism, and would probably end up a pregnant, addicted college dropout in a few years without religion. Well, thanks.
Later, when we had a house fire, my dad and brother (both approximately Bronze Age Catholics) intimated that I hadn’t been praying enough, maybe these kinds of things wouldn’t happen otherwise. 
Jess, you’ll get away in a few years, and it’ll be great. Keep up the good work.
Technically, it’s two free countries, since FT isn’t Canadian.
Anyway, I’ll never be able to prove it, but I strongly believe that the people who are dicks about religion would be dicks about something else if they didn’t have religion. I’m sure there are a few that do horrible things in the name of their god(s) who wouldn’t do them otherwise, but I think that for the majority of douchebag religious people it’s just an excuse to be a douchebag.*
I do also believe that douchebags are generally more inclined to be drawn toward religion, just as they’re drawn toward being Yankee fans or watching American Idol or reading USA Today.
*I don’t mean to imply that all religious people are douchebags.
Someone on these very boards once explained to me the train of thought. These parents probably honestly believe that she will go to hell for this, which is why these kind of people try to make something that isn’t any of their business, into their business. To them, it’s an evil act not to.
I will say that I’ve been more understanding of this sort of behavior ever since. I still loathe them, but it makes more sense.
Well, you best not be too attached to democracy either. Lots of violence and inhumanity occurs as a result of political ideology as well. Some more than others, true, but our collective hands aren’t pristine by any means.
But, hey, I’m not a huge fan of religion either.
“Good types”? I don’t know that I’d say that, exactly. One of the books I had in mind was Godstalk, which is about a young woman who kills a god, more or less as part of her hobby.
I was talking about FT’s country. 
But of course, it’d apply if FT was visiting Canada, too.
I believe that’s definitely true. Look, some people are just asshats.
But in my opinion, religion increases dickishness. It introduces division and intolerance in places it might not be. How many people otherwise WOULDN’T participate in dickishness but do so anyway because they feel obliged to go along with the herd?
Religion is nonsense, and people are not well served by believing nonsense. Believing that nonexistent spirits are giving you commands isn’t something that’s going to have a net positive impact in the long run.
The difference is that democracy really exists. It’s an actual fact. I don’t have to believe in it on faith; I have objective evidence that some nation-states hold elections. (And since I place no unblinking faith in any particular form of democracy being the One and True Way, it’s not equivalent to religious belief.) I don’t have any rational choice but to accept that there is democracy in some places, dictatorships in others. I’d like to get rid of ideologically-based war, too, but I’m unclear as to what that has to do with the fact that religion is (a) false, and (b) destructive.