Billy (A Liberal Disabled Vet), guest posting at Atheist Revolution, tells two stories of girls he has met in his life. Both are disturbing, but one has a slightly happier ending…
One is about a girl who had exposure to the outside world; the other is about one who was seemingly sheltered from it:
These two stories show (to me at least) what has changed in America over the last 25 or so years. The girl I knew in Maryland had been indoctrinated from birth to see no problem in damning anyone who thought differently (heretics) to hell. She was so convinced of her righteousness that she could not conceive of another point of view. Through contact with the real world, though, she eventually became more accepting of reality. The little girl from Idaho, though, (and I am assuming that she was home schooled in a Christianist and/or fundamentalist and/or Dominionist milieu) will most likely never be exposed to competing world views. The narrow glimpse she gets at church and at home and on play dates with approved friends will never allow her to mesh with the rest of the world.
To me, the stories teach parents to let their kids interact with all sorts of different people. It makes the kids more well-rounded and exposes them to different beliefs and values that may contradict your own. That’s good for them.
At the same time, there could be parents out there hearing the same stories and admiring the other girl, the one who was too young to think any differently from what she was taught.
And that is just frightening.
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
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