I Demand Christian Children!

The Quiverfull movement seems to hold the belief that they can win by simply having more babies than everybody else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull

The illustration and the comment made by the image seems silly so I will not comment on that but to answer your question, you first need to understand what Christianity teaches about our relationship with God. According to Christianity, in order to live a perfectly fulfilled life we must live in perfect union with God. Obviously none of us are perfect so this is theoretically impossible but it is a goal we can set for ourselves. If you do not know God then you can never live in union with him and, although you may live a good life, it will never reach its potential. Obviously there are good atheists out there and there are bad Christians. The Christian philosophy does not mean to pit atheist against christian but to contrast your own potential against your own current state of existence. If God does exist, are you as good as you can be?

If God does not exist, the question is still very relevant. Are you as good as you can be? Where do we fall short of living a perfect life and what do we need to do to change those things?

I’m taking a whole different meaning from this – somehow this dolt is buying in to the idea that Christianity is like some endangered species and is on the brink of extinction. If only. Someone needs to tell her that even if it gets to the point that there are only 10 Christians left in the entire country, she’ll still have the right to raise her children in whatever religion she sees fit. But, with her martyr syndrome in full bloom it might be best if she doesn’t breed at all, quite honestly. What a putz.

Beautifully put on all points. There are too many kids already here that need to be taken care of without adding to the mix.

Regardless of the existence of god(s), then, it seems like you could have gotten to your point without evoking it (him/her/whatever).  Your final paragraph tells us this.

If you can make your point about human potential without invoking an unverifiable, unfalsifiable, and completely untestable premise, then that premise is unnecessary.

The question then becomes, irrespective of the existence of god(s), why should we bother evoking them when we discuss morality?

At least there was another postcard this week that wrote, “In my opinion, the absence of a meaning of life is what makes life so wonderful.” 

There’s a hole lot of problems with your definition of goatse. 😉

If god does not exist, then people who choose to do good are doing so because they want to benefit society, and make the world better for everyone.

But if god DOES exist, and it’s the Christian God, then it doesn’t really matter how good you are.  That god is only concerned with belief, not acts of goodness.  He will forgive any atrocity, as long as you believe in him enough to ask for forgiveness.  Atheists who live a life of charity, kindness, generosity and love are still doomed to Hell because they have not been convinced that anything with a supernatural explanation actually exists.

It’s good that Christianity has a self-empowering philosophy that guides you to improve yourself.  But that doesn’t make its supernatural claims true.  People SHOULD try to improve themselves, and be as good as they can be.  That improves society, and the quality of life for all of us.  But by attaching this mythology to it, and by insisting that this is the superior method by which to judge morality, it DOES pit one group against another, not just atheists but religion against religion.  Religion cultivates a “chosen people” mindset.  It makes people feel justified in saying “I understand what God wants from all humanity, and you don’t”.  This is very divisive throughout humanity, and doesn’t add to religion’s credibility.  A more competent god should’ve been more successful at uniting its creation.

possibly she even agreed to raise the children to make up their own minds when they were old enough – and has started to suspect that will not lead them to choose christianity.

At first, I read all but the last word (I hadn’t scrolled down to it yet) and interpreted this as a pro-choice statement!

I wonder if that could even work to keep the Christian population up, if it were more widely accepted.  A lot of children in those families reject how they’re raised just because the family was too big with too big of demands placed on them because of it.

I disapprove most strongly of the depicted method for raising children. Or any other person, for that matter. Where does all this brutality we see these days come from, I wonder? If they had been butterflies they would at least have been killed with alcohol first, but this must be pure medieval evil of Transsylvanian proportions!

Oh, I know, but it was just funny to say.

Hmmm… So this is an anonymous posting by someone who ‘really’ wants to to raise their children christian? I have to wonder why this person chose an image of a doll with a stick up it’s arse as their abstract representation of raising a christian child.

In most respects I agree with you. People should teach their kids to think rather than just sharing what they believe about the universe with them. But….

1) No one does this, not even atheists. I was taught in grade 7 science class (as were millions and millions of others) that blood is actually blue and only becomes red when oxygenated. I passed that nugget along to my five year old who tried to impress our doctor with her knowledge, who then snickered and proceeded to tell me that this “fact” was a myth and went so far as to lecture myself and my wife (who works in health care) about the origins of said myth. Bet you five bucks my daughter still shares that little article of wisdom with her kids, even though she knows it’s wrong.

I tell my kids to wear a hat outside or they’ll catch a cold, even though I know that you cannot catch a virus from weather, no matter how much you make out with it. I kick myself every time I say it, but it’s so deeply ingrained.

The point is, everybody teaches their kids things that they believe to be true, whether they’ve been debunked or not. Just something to keep in mind when poking sticks at others.

2) “Here’s another thought. Just don’t have children. You’ll be fine without them. So will we.”

This is…gross.

Normally I like the tenor of the articles on this site. They convey bemusement, sarcasm, and occasionally justified anger. I’m okay with all of those. 

Implying, however, that the children of people you don’t agree with should not be conceived is, on a deeply human level, atrocious behavior, especially in an article championing the moral weight of non-theistic child rearing. 

It is never okay to descend into cruelty or outright (in this case apparently) eugenically motivated bigotry in support of your position.

I know that likely isn’t what was intended. I know the author was likely trying to make a comment on overpopulation and skewed it. It doesn’t matter. If you have an audience, you have to be deliberate in your choices of words. Saying crap like the above quote is EXACTLY why it’s so easy for theists to argue that they have the moral high ground and point at atheists as arrogant, amoral fools. Why would you ever want to give away that kind of ammo?

If she married a Muslim man, for example, it might not be so clear whether she would be able to raise her children Christian.

No reason to get bent out of shape, that’s how we get most of our atheists!

Interesting. Usually when there are two parents of different faiths, they agree to let the child decide for themselves, which means the child ends up non-religious and sometimes an atheist. If your coworker ended up Catholic, that probably means that the Muslim parent wasn’t really strong in their faith and just let the Catholic parent do the teaching.

Wait…NOT conceiving children is atrocious?  Then I’m in big trouble.

I am slightly confused by your #1 point. You know things aren’t true and
yet you go ahead and say them anyway? This says something about you,
not other people. When I learn things are wrong, I correct them. If I
learn something I thought was true is wrong, I go ahead and say I was
wrong and tell other people that it actually isn’t true. The fact that
you would go ahead and tell other people things that you know are not
true is completely baffling to me. So, no, not everyone does it and you
should stop spreading lies. — And, yes, it is a lie when you say it and
you know it’s not true.

(I thought it was funny.)

Perhaps I was unclear in the first part of my post. I was trying to answer the question posed by Hemant. He was asking why are the beliefs so important to Christians? To understand this, you must understand what Christians believe. I was pointing out that a relationship with and an accurate knowledge of God becomes important due to our belief system as a whole.
This is a separate issue then morals/ethics. Morals and ethics can be defined separately from God to some degree. Christianity does not define morals it simply attempts to clarify what is already there and what can be deduced by reason.

Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and call shenanigans on this one. 

What year is it, Coconut? Do you write 2011 in the date fields of forms when asked? Even though we know that since 0-1 would have been the first calendar year, it’s actually 2010? Or maybe, since we know that the Earth is actually billions of years older than the Gregorian calendar reflects, you strive for a much more accurate date; something like 4,357,002,011?

Yes, EVERYONE occasionally passes on as fact things they know to be factually incorrect. You’re not neither special in this regard nor immune to it’s effect, so please, don’t stick your nose up in the air over things you haven’t thought through. It makes you appear absurd.