Maybe if the Kid Tells People They’re Going to Hell, They’ll Listen…

Why would this be child abuse? What child wouldn’t want to spend an afternoon in a beautiful park under the shadow of a tree? What, you think his parents made him do it? Give me a break.

It is most definitly a form of abuse– psychological.

-religious abuse survivor-

Either @mud raid man and @rwlawoffice are being sarcastic, or they are real christians thinking that this scene should not be thought unusual. If it’s the latter, then you are totally out of touch with reality, thinking an 8 or 9-yr-old child would want to spend a couple of hours holding a sign parading in front of 20-yr-old adults. Much less this sign!

Sure, a child likes to spend an afternoon in a park…playing.  Swimming.  Throwing a ball or a frisbee around.  Riding bikes.  Playing on playground equipment.  But holding up fire-and-brimstone religious signs for hours while passers-by ridicule him and roll their eyes?  Not so much, I think.  

I hope you’re joking.  That sign is bigger than the kid, probably pretty heavy, and – unless he can’t read and no one told him what the sign says – probably pretty embarrassing as well.  

Bringing a child up inside any church, or exposing him to religion as anything other than mythology is certainly a form of child abuse, which results in often permanent damage to that child (and consequently, to society as a whole).

It is, however, perfectly legal abuse. The only practical fix is to cure the parents before they are parents… which is why there is so much hope in the current exodus of youth away from religion.

 So Christian theology in and of itself is now child abuse?

So raising a child in church is now child abuse and you guys call yourselves the tolerant ones.  

 Thirty

I’d say that teaching a child to believe mythology without questioning, instead of to use critical thinking, is run-of-the-mill bad parenting at the very least.  To teach a child that they will be eternally tortured by having their flesh burned from their body in a lake of fire for making mistakes (even relatively minor ones, and doing some things that are totally ethically fine) absolutely IS emotional abuse.  Since that constitutes an integral part of the doctrine of almost every form of Christianity, then yes…  Christian theology in and of itself is child abuse.

I was being sarcastic 🙂 This sight is not only unusual, it’s horrible. It represents a lot of what’s wrong with religion: people don’t consciously choose a religion, they more often than not just go with whatever their parents impose on them.

You really have a gross misconception about Christian parents and Christian theology.  

There is nothing in that sign that points to the “tolerance” you are now seeking from atheists.

In fact, that sign preaches some pretty heavy INTOLERANCE.

In the words of Inigo Montoya: Tolerance: “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Children? John McCain chose Sarah Palin. 
Rational informed choice?

 Who said anything about the sign pointing to tolerance.  My comment is about the comments here.  Calling parents teaching their children Christian theology child abuse is what is intolerant.  

Oh of course he is!. That’s why we let 8 year olds vote and drink and sign legally binding contracts and go out in public alone at night and decide whether or not they want to attend school. 

Ohwait, no we don’t.

 Obviously it is a little different in every circumstance, but so many people ditch religion around college age for a reason, whether or not they actually attend a university.

But Christianity in-particular gains almost ALL converts from children, as actual Christian evangelists will gladly tell you. Most adult “converts” were already informal Christians who make a new commitment (usually after an emotionally traumatizing event). When I was in the religion, I was told by our own evangelists that almost all Christians are Christian by age 10-ish, with a tail off towards age 14, and you’ve basically lost your window of opportunity after that.

To a Christian this means to spend more money on advertising to children – the camps and happy fun times that they try to use to suck in unchurched local kids. To a non-Christian, this means children. are. gullible.

Children naturally are inclined to believe whatever their elders  tell them, and in general that is a good thing. However, when religious authority figures get involved, fairy tales are taught as factual history, distorting the base of common sense the child has been building. It’s no surprise that they then go on to believe the most ridiculously absurd things into adulthood, and perpetuate the cycle with their own children.

The kid in the picture doesn’t look quite old enough to be sneaking alternate philosophy textbooks under the table just yet (although such things do occasionally happen with exceptionally precocious children). It seems quite reasonable to assume that he’s just like I was at that age: the preacher said it, my parents trust the preacher, therefore it’s true.

I am not sure where you stand. But if you are a Christian, ask yourself this: what is wrong with your philosophy, that it can only make converts out of the ignorance of youth?

 So because you don’t believe it Christianity is a lie.  I guess that solves it. 

So point me to a law that says raising a child as a Christian is child abuse.  I would love to see it.

 If you are talking about certain decisions like voting or drinking, then I agree there are certain ages of maturity. That however doesn’t apply to decisions of faith. If it did, I would suggest you contact the organizations trying to set up atheists clubs in high school and tel them they are starting too young.

 Do you really need a law that says teaching children that they can do something so bad that they will be unloved FOREVER is bad????

I mean, sure, laws are good and all that, but methinks having to spell that out legally leaves a good deal of your moral character in question….

Yes – Religious indoctrination is instilling a false truth based purely on belief and not evidence.  And it’s not a fun belief like Santa and whatnot, it’s a belief that affects the way you look at yourself and the way you treat others.  This is a bad thing.

Telling an innocent child that anyone who doesn’t believe in exactly the same religion/politics/whatever that Mommy/Daddy believe deserves to be tortured for infinity, and in fact ARE going to be tortured for eternity, and it’s the child’s job to try and stop that…

Yeah. That’s child abuse.

They certainly go berserk when there’s an atheist sign amongst the Christmas nonsense in state houses.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-05/living/atheists.christmas_1_sign-freedom-from-religion-foundation-nativity-scene 

I’ll give you I don’t think he was directly forced, any more than the kid who asked Bachman why she hated his mom was forced or otherwise coerced.  I think both are the product of their environment.  But I do think in all cases we should give kids the benefit of the doubt and treat them like people.  Some limitations, sure, but to assume that this kid didn’t make his own decision to hold that sign isn’t a far cry from those who claim Jessica Ahlquist is just a pawn.

Now, whether telling kids that some people go to hell is abusive or not is another matter. 

I find it amusing that you seem to believe when atheists say what we think, we’re being “intolerant,” but when you say what you think, you’re somehow not.

I do think lying requires intent.  I think what they’re saying is untrue, but that’s not the same as lying.

I’ve read the bible, and he’s pretty mild as there is some REALLY disturbing stuff in that book.

And some of us are just as quick to complain about atheist groups targeting children.  That’s one of the reasons I hated, absolutely hated, the FFRF billboard of a smiling Santa saying “Yes, Virginia, there is no god.”   That targeted children. Bad bad idea. 

Didn’t Theodore Dreiser’s great novel, “An American Tragedy” begin with a fundamentalist family using their child for street prostelyzing in Kansas City?  As I recall, it did not end well. 

 So you don’t teach your child that they will go to Hell if they don’t follow the rules?

Now truly, that would be a show-stopper.

I went to OSU in my undergrad days, and we had the campus preachers there every day.  I wonder if he’s related.  That was their approach.  Somehow, agnostic that I was, I knew this represented a small portion of the religious world.  As for child abuse?  No.  Child abuse is child abuse.  It is not someone doing something with a child that I would never do for reasons with which I disagree.  Just because someone has their child doing something I might find appalling does not make it abuse.  Once we go down that path, heaven – or pick your favorite reality – help us. 

I am tolerant. I have a very libertarian viewpoint on what adults should be allowed to do.

Religion is like pornography. It should be completely legal, but it is inappropriate for children.

If children weren’t indoctrinated in this false belief system, few would adopt it as adults. And a good many of the world’s most serious problems would simply go away.

It takes no more than a limited understanding of Christianity to figure out that the child in the picture has been taught that he will go to hell forever if he doesn’t follow Jesus.

Just because something is legal doesn’t make it a good idea.

I think many of us are Atheists not because we don’t understand Christianity, but because we understand it all too well.  I think it takes a “limited understanding” of Christianity to believe in it and not find it totally absurd. 

Maybe.. in the same way KKK kids giving the Sieg Heil sign.

There is no proof of god, Jesus, or any of the other now retired mythological gods. Yes sweetie, Christianity is a lie. From a purely bullshit stand point, it is the greatest con job in the history of the planet, so at least you have that feather in your pious cap….wear it with PRIDE.

Actually, like most people in America – Alabama no less, I was raised by Christian parents.  Great human beings, I love ’em to smithereens, but they absolutely did teach me about Hell.  I have also read much of the Bible, and everything I asserted is in that generally-awful book.  It is absolutely absurd to claim that eternal torment in Hell is not a part of Christian theology, and that Hell is not considered to be a place of eternal punishment and suffering by way of burning.  It’s so absurd that I don’t even know how to begin countering that assertion.  Almost every subset of Christianity teaches the idea of Hell as absolute reality.  Hell is a place where you go for disbelieving in the divinity of an ancient carpenter.  Hell is a place you go for having sex with someone of your own gender.  These are things that are in no way unethical, just prohibited by the archaic laws of ancient peoples (the smartest of whom were incredibly ignorant by modern standards).  If you think these concepts are not part of Christianity, then you are the one with a gross misconception of Christian theology – either that, or you are being dishonest.  You might personally  be a moderate or liberal person, and you might like to think of your deity as a kind and loving god of peace, but that does not change the fact that eternal torment in Hell plays a colossal role in Christianity.  You can attack me personally by saying I have a gross misconception about your religion and the beliefs/practices of people who believe in it, but that does nothing whatsoever to refute my points that teaching children they’ll burn eternally in the lake of fire for falling out of line with the rules of the Bible is an integral part of Christianity, that Christian parents teach this to their children all the time, and that it is an absolutely disgusting thing to tell a child.

Almost everything about Christianity is untrue, much of it demonstrably so.  Whether it’s technically a lie may depend on whether the person professing it believes it to be true, but it is a lie nonetheless.  Not just because I don’t believe it, but because it is absolutely absurd and contrary to all known evidence. Jesus may very well existed, although he is very very poorly documented (all written accounts dating from well after his supposed death).  I’m willing to assume that there was a historical Jesus, although I’m not 100% positive.  There is absolutely no evidence however that he was anything but one of many ascetics who led a bizarre Jewish cult, a very common phenomenon in his day.  There is no evidence of anything supernatural, including deities, so there is no reason to believe that he could be divine.  The very concept of divinity itself is bankrupt.  There is no reason to believe he was any more capable of healing the sick without medicine than are any modern-day faith healer, which is to say “not at all capable.”  Not only that, but it is absolutely impossible – IMPOSSIBLE – that he resurrected anyone from the dead or rose from the dead himself.  Even if he was crucified and resurrected, why would that be necessary in the eyes of your god in order to grant his creations forgiveness from sins that he personally tempted them with, omnisciently knowing that they were imperfect (as he created them) and would take the bait?  Couldn’t he just forgive without human sacrifice?  I can forgive without human sacrifice.  You can forgive without human sacrifice.  Why can’t an omnipotent deity?  It’s barbaric.  The concept of sin itself is repugnant – eternal reward and punishment for violating arbitrary laws written by priests without accepting the divine nature of an ancient Jewish carpenter whose very existence is not supported by any observable evidence.

Remind her of the child artist with athiest parents called Akianne [google her]or the #1 best seller on the New York Times list,4yo Colton Burpo book,Heaven is for real.

I am tolerant of an adult’s right to think whatever they want and to say it without being punished by the government.  I’m even tolerant in that I’m okay with people disagreeing with me.  I am not tolerant of child abuse, and if the particular brand of religion that is forced on a child constitutes child abuse then I am not tolerant of that.

Poor little minion… getting corrupted so early

Some are. I figured out that there was no god at around this age.

 To all the other replies, I’ll add a reminder about the bizarre amounts of fetishistic violence,
misogyny and porn (up to and including snuff porn!) in the text that said children are taught to believe is sacred and reflective of capital-L Love.

Complaining that we aren’t tolerant of abuse because it’s religious is pretty sad. And pretty typical. Are you Catholic by chance?

 The vast majority of children who are raised in churches are taught what that kid in the photo has on his sign. It is directly representative of what we’re criticizing as abuse. That most children don’t carry signs doesn’t change the evil things they’re being taught. Please learn to read for comprehension.

 It’s demonstrably a lie. The Bible is supposedly the word of God, but is filled with fallacies: Pi = 3, diseases are caused by evil spirits, no record of the Jews’ enslavement, creation of the world goes unnoticed by civilizations already in place, global flood fails to discomfit other extant cultures, zombies rise en masse and no one notices…

… God is eternally loving but sets up humans for a fate more evil than imagination can grasp…

So yeah. Your book is a worse lie than The Cake.

At the age that they’re given good schooling in weighing alternatives and consequences, and when they have been given useful, unbiased information.

Pleased to be of service!

Again dinkus, go back to the archives and find the post regarding the young boy telling Michele Bachman that his mother didn’t need any changing – she being a lesbian.

The outcry here was a general feeling that the child was used and that the child needs to grow and learned come to his own comclusions, so it shows that your little bout of false indignance is hokum.

Unlike your evil pedophilia church, this group shows integrity in its statements and is consistent, even when it goes against the group belief.

Once again, you lose.

My question is—was the father watching to make sure no one harmed this child, while he had him hold that “warning” sign?   He was on a college campus, but that doesn’t mean he was safe, IMO.   Preacher man needs to have his head examined doing this to his child.   

 Sorry, I read your previous statement “wrong” also,  thus my reply to you above.    It is sad to see a child doing this, I agree. 

 So asking one poster how she would react is the same to you as attacking the whole set of people who post here.  You are right, you are very consistent in your ignorant generalizations.

 An assumption based on absolutely no evidence- not very rational of you.  I don’t know one way or the other, but I am not jumping to the conclusion that it is child abuse just because of the message in the sign.

I never bought into Christianity in the first place. To suggest I “rejected” it makes as much sense as saying I rejected the KKK, the Tea Party, or any other organization that no sane or ethical person would go near.

It doesn’t matter how many positive things Christianity might teach, it can’t make up for the fundamental harm of all theism, which is believing in something that isn’t real. And it can’t make up for the specific ethical disaster of Christianity, that a person can be forgiven by somebody other than the person that was harmed.

 My comments were about the comments here. Don ‘t agree with Christianity and parents who teach it are committing child abuse.  That is what is intolerant.  

 Not a Catholic.  Go to a nondenominational grace church. 

Website: http://www.brcc.net

Calling it abuse because you disagree with it doesn’t make it abuse, it just makes you intolerant.

Hey, thanks for admitting that your religion has nothing to do with “rational, informed decision-making,” as you put it earlier, and don’t require any degree of maturity.

Now, this is the point at which a smart lawyer would swallow hard, sit down and hope to have better luck in the next case.

 I really suggest that you read a book- I Don’t have enough faith to be an atheist by Norman Geisler.  This book answers alot of your questions much better then I could do in this short space.

Just because you are a naturalists and don’t belief in miracles doesn’t make it not so.

To answer your questions as to why Jesus’ sacrifice was necessary it would take a course in soteriology to explain that in detail.  However the short hand version is that since the price of sin is death, the payment for sin needed to be death and God being just, didn’t call for the death of a human but sent his own son to pay that price,  a price that we all otherwise earned. For a good explanation of this read Romans.  
       

So to be clear, you’d be okay with a parent to took their kid to KKK meetings?

Whether there is one or not is not the point.  My question was how would you feel about that. Would you consider it abuse?    Or would it not be abuse just because you agree with the message.

Tell me where I said that. 

I don’t disbelieve in miracles because I’m a naturalist.  I disbelieve in miracles and am a naturalist because that is where all evidence lies.  All evidence confirms it, no evidence refutes it.  Miracles are totally unsubstantiated by facts, and very easy to refute.

In response to your Jesus-sacrifice answer, I’ve heard all of that before in extreme detail.  The price of sin is supposedly death because God said so.  He decided there needed to be a death, not anyone else. No one held a gun to his head.  It’s totally his call whether or not to just simply forgive or to have a person brutally tortured and killed by being whipped and then nailed to a cross.  He’s supposed to be omnipotent.  If he actually existed and were everything he’s claimed to be, he can do anything you or I can do and more.  So why not just say “I forgive you” and move on?

 You talk in circles.  I stand by my statement.  You look only to natural evidence to try and prove something that is supernatural. 

For you to describe how God could have done things is really only how you would have done things. In response I will tell you what one of my professors told me once- If you knew what God knows and you were as loving as God is, you would do the exact things he does.  

 Read again.  I never said anything of the sort.  But nice try.

Likewise…  Saying something isn’t abuse just because you read it in an ancient book that you believe wholeheartedly in, doesn’t make it not abuse.

Hah! So true.

Teaching the truth is not indoctrination, it is education. Teaching children that there is no God is just good sense.

The reason these responses generally espouse the same point of view about one particular aspect of the religion, is that this particular conversation is about a very specific topic.  Please see the post we’re responding to.  It’s about indoctrinating children with the idea of hell, and sending them out to teach it to others.

Regardless of whether there are some parts of the doctrine that teach positive messages about love (there definitely are, and those are the ones I focused on exclusively when I was a Christian), the negative parts are still very much in there and they’re not just kind of negative, they’re atrocious.  And it’s not just a matter of them being intellectually displeasing.  These doctrines actually cause real-world damage: discrimination against homosexuals, women, and non-Christians; poor people giving all their money to a preacher; people dying of AIDS because the church disapproves of condoms; Christians in Africa attacking children as witches and killing homosexuals; and tons more.

Some here have not actually rejected Christianity, as you say.  They never believed it in the first place so they haven’t “rejected” it anymore than they’ve “rejected” Harry Potter.  I HAVE HOWEVER REJECTED CHRISTIANITY.  I was once a Christian and thought that was a good thing, but I began to see that the doctrine itself was actually not true and that believing something untrue was making me and those around me act in irrational, destructive ways.  Maybe you’re not aware of the harm Christianity causes others because it isn’t harming you personally, but that doesn’t mean the harm doesn’t exist and affect real people.

At exactly what age is it appropriate to threaten someone with the prospect of eternal torture by fire?

You are very consistent at dodging the actual content of my posts.

What Peterson is saying is that you continually claim that we are intolerant for disapproving of indoctrinating children with a particular detail of Christianity that is harmful to them, assert that we are doing so simply because we don’t believe in your religion, and stating that you can teach your child what you want.

Peterson is saying that some people believe wholeheartedly in the messages of the Klan and involve their children.  If you really believe parents can teach their children whatever they want with no negative repercussions and that anyone who criticizes that is intolerant, then you must also stand by the rights of racist bigots to indoctrinate their children with KKK values.

I, on the other hand, think that would be child abuse.

Exactly.  People see what they want to see. Rwlawoffice wants to only see the good things about his/her religion and ignore all of the evil that accompanies it.

Please explain the loving, forgiving kindness involved in teaching children the doctrine of hell and eternal torture, then sending them out to share that with people much older, wiser, and bigger than they are.

Thanks.

 So… he decided on his own there is a god, and the most important thing this god wants him to do is cary a sign stating that people will get tortured for eternity?

Really..?

 Supernatural? where is your evidence? REAL Evidence pleace.

Try to make more sense the next time.

 He should have called his book “I Don’t Have Enough Sense of Reality to be an Atheist”.

Rwlawoffice, I take it that you agree with the message on the boy’s sign. I therefore assume you believe there is a heavenly reward for accepting Jesus as your personal saviour.
Why then, wouldn’t it be more appropriate for the boy to be carrying a sign espousing the rewards for belief? I expect such a positive message wouldn’t generate the response desired by the preacher who encouraged (possibly required) the boy to hold this sign.

 And if it was all his own choise, where did he get the sign? Did he find it? Did someone give it to him? Did he save money so he could have it printed like that?

Of course, rwlawoffice is incapable of addressing anything said by an actual human being.  It is only capable of conversing with the voices in its head and strawmen of its own construction.  Must be a pretty shitty lawyer. 

 So, at what age is it appropriate to THREATEN A CHILD WITH NEVERENDING TORTURE, AND SEND THEM OUT TO MAKE THAT SAME THREAT AGAINST OTHERS?

 Then its a good thing you are not God.

 All caps aside, teaching that Jesus is the way to eternal life can be done in an way that is appropriate for their age at most ages. For example, ever hear of the song Jesus loves me? Just like I am sure you teach your children about death without telling them that their body rots in the dirt and then decays into nothing, Christian parents can teach their kids about death and their soul without threats or details that they are too young to understand or comprehend.

 I agree that the Christian message of love and grace is one that should be spread and is very appropriate.

Except for the part about hell and eternal torture.

 And the christian message of hell and eternal torture?

 If you are looking for a natural explanation for miracles that defy the laws of nature by definition then you show the limits of the types of evidence that you think is the only valid evidence, thus you will by your own definition of evidence limit the other types of evidence that exists.  Again, this type of discussion is too limited to explain fully, but I suggest you read the book I gave you and this is explained in great detail.  But in summary, I will tell you that when I see a universe that was created out of nothing and if hawing is correct that before then there was no natural laws, then I daily see evidence of a supernatural event.

If you believe that from your finite perspective both in time and knowledge that any decision that would make  is better then a decision that God who has the perspective of full knowledge and eternity, then you are giving yourself way too much credit.

The answer to alot of your issues is the free will of man.  We were made with free will out of love by God the fact that we have chosen to abuse that free will is our fault, not God’s.  And now that you know that there is famine in the world and other tragedies, and it wouldn’t be here if you were  God, what have you done to prevent it in your life?

 That is some sick reasoning. Made possible by the destructive powers of delisional thinking.

Jesus ass wiping Christ, you are like Johnny Cochrane yelling “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”

You keep giving sound bites and mantra with no actual argumentation and you ignore the logical points being made.

You are an asshole.

 I allready have eternal seperation from god. Just like with every other non-existance.

 Well, maybe if christians didn’t constantly make terrorist threats of neverending torture, then people wouldn’t laugh in your face so much when you say that your sick fantasy of watching people burning alive forever is a story “of grace and love and that is taught without any discussions of threats or hate”.  But as long as your primary method of propping up your delusions is to threaten people, you will not get anyone with a brain to take you seriously when you claim there are no threats involved.

 So, your particular flavor of the christian delusion doesn’t agree with the image of flames and torture conveyed by the sign you’ve been defending all this time.  Then WHY do you keep pretending that there’s nothing wrong with threatening to torture people forever in fire? 

Either you’re lying about what you believe, or you’re a sociopath.  Or, most likely, both. 

 Willful ignorance is the core tenet of Rwlawoffice’s religion. 

 I see that Rwlawoffice has made the choice I expected.  It has chosen to lie, constantly, without any shame or remorse.  It worships its own lies and willful ignorance, and calls those things “god”. 

In my opinion, you can’t teach this to a child without damaging them. Period.

You are teaching them that magic is real. You are teaching them that there is such a thing as “eternal life”. These things have no basis in reality. In teaching these things, you take away from a child the very thing that makes us human: the ability to think rationally. That’s what makes teaching religion a form of abuse. Nothing about the torture of hell. Nothing about the intolerance most religions endorse. Nothing about the bad ethics attributed to Jesus. Nothing about the sadistic Abrahamic god. The abuse is in destroying rationality in a young mind.

Oh, I didn’t expect you to admit, or probably even realize, you’d bungled your argument that badly. Fortunately, it’s obvious to anyone with decent reading comprehension.

He did not describe YOUR idea of what a god should be like accurately.
Plus bonus: No Real Scotsman Fallacy.
You’re on a roll today!

While it would be better, since at least the sign would be accurate (almost certainly true that God isn’t real, and very possibly true that Jesus never lived), just sending a kid out into a park with any sign carrying an advertisement demonstrates bad parenting.

BTW, I didn’t say that the act of putting this kid in the park with the sign was abusive. It’s just bad parenting. What’s abusive is teaching a kid that gods or devils are real.

Oh you ignorant….willfully ignorant jackass.

Give us one iota…just one piece of evidence your flavor of intolerrant and hate filled myth is real and we will gladly be quite. But, make it real evidence.

 He is practicing how to keep his delusion. Probably for brownie points.

People teach their kids all sorts of things I don’t agree with, and I don’t consider them abusive or challenge their parenting skills.

This isn’t about teaching something I disagree with, it’s about teaching something that causes lasting damage to a child. Precisely the thing that we should be intolerant of.

The message of Spiderman is that we swinging is fucking cool.

But wi great power comes great respo…..

Oh fuck it, you don’t get the analogy…there is a much realism and relevance to spiderman as there is to your myths.

Acting like Jesus message is like arguing about Peter Parker’s message. Neither are real, and at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter one lick shit. Except for the fact that the followers of one try to hurt others and restrict their freedoms while the other doesn’t.

Choosing your own fictional savior over the reality that is Zeus is not wise. You might want to change your belief system before Zeus turns himself into a swan and comes down and fucks you…or maybe even releases the Kracken on you.  How could you possibly practice such a new religion as Christianity when there are so many other older religions out there that are based on even earlier texts and mythology. For shame!

nor did you include all of his attributes

An abusive spouse who gives you chocolate and flowers is still an abusive spouse.

I’m rapidly becoming convinced that his whole intention in being here is to send all commentary into the spiral of column death, rendering it unreadable, and therefore, at least in his mind, moot.

I asked you point blank: If not natural evidence, then what?  And you have dodged that question, like my other questions before.

Yes, I do believe from my finite perspective that burning someone for eternity or having them whipped and beaten and nailed to a cross is evil and unjustified in any circumstances.  I don’t know how you could even argue with that.  I’m not giving myself way too much credit (and I give you the same credit I give myself, because I’m convinced you’d never burn or crucify anyone), I’m just not giving your idea of a deity any credit at all (because I think it deserves none).

First off, I don’t necessarily believe in free will – at least not as you probably define it.  Even assuming for the sake of argument that we have absolute free will, I don’t think I’ve abused that free will in any way.  I’m an ethical person.  I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve learned from those mistakes.  People I’ve wronged I have asked for forgiveness and done my best to make it up to them, and worked on being self-aware enough to not repeat the same mistake.  I don’t need divine forgiveness for the way I live my life.  I think it’s mighty presumptuous and judgmental for you to assume that I would.

I’m not a god and I can’t fix the world’s problems, but I do try and help in any way that I can, even if that’s just by spreading the information about what’s going on so that others who might be in a better position to help can do so (or so people who are contributing to the harm can understand what they’re doing and stop).  Although I live below the poverty line myself and have health conditions that suck up a lot of the money I do make, any time I see a homeless person I try to help them out.  If they’re selling newspapers, I buy one.  If they ask for food and I have money on me, I buy them a meal.  A week or two ago I bought a homeless man a bag of groceries that should have lasted him a few days.  A few days later, I passed a homeless man with a bad leg who had fallen down on the side of the road.  I turned my car around, helped him up, and supported his weight as I walked him back to the place he was living (the porch of an abandoned house).  I’m not bragging about this stuff, I’m not saving the world here.  But this is how I live my life, helping in any way I can when I see something going wrong.  Like I said, I’m not a god.  I can’t snap my fingers and fix the world.  But if your god actually existed, he could.  And doesn’t.

The caps were to emphasize a particular point I have stated over and over again that you refuse to answer.  I will ask my question again without the caps, so as not to offend your font sensibilities:

At what age is it appropriate to threaten a child with never-ending torture, and send them out to make that same threat against others?

This is correct.  Most Christians don’t run around saying, “It’s okay that you’re an atheist, because you will be going to heaven too.”  And the sign we are all discussing here is not about the positive message of love or eternal reward.  It is about eternal torment, and that is why we are focusing on that concept in this discussion.

Honestly, I’m not going to read that book.  I’ve heard and read the best that Christian apologists have to offer – over and over and over.  The very title of the book is an absolutely ignorant (but very common) assertion that has been made in various ways for ages.  It’s been said by some very intelligent Christian scholars, and it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.  I can’t read a new book every time someone re-words the same old arguments I hear over and over.  My time is better spent reading Uncanny X-Force, an admittedly frivolous and superficial comic book that – unlike the Bible – at least has the guts to highlight the moral ambiguity of all the senseless violence it celebrates.

So an atheist needs evidence to assume an 8-year-old was coerced into evangelizing the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell on a college campus, yet you continuously scold me for requiring evidence that your religion is true?  If you cannot see the hypocrisy, then it is out of your own willful ignorance.

If this child has meticulously researched all of the world’s known religions, read all of the important philosophical texts, has a comprehensive knowledge of world history, fully understands evolutionary biology, and has a little bit of knowledge of physics, then maybe the child is capable of making such a decision.  Since it would take longer than this child’s entire lifespan to digest such knowledge, and the child’s brain isn’t particularly developed yet at his age, I find this to be highly unlikely.

 And now I am so glad the indoctrination never “took” for me. I have anxiety issues that I am medicated for, and I still do that “lay awake and worry about nothing” thing at least two nights a week. I don’t think throwing the fear of salvation and hell and being all responsible for saving other people’s souls thing on top of that would have a pleasant result.

You have my sympathy.

I agree with you.  I do know some Christians who are very intelligent and scholarly…  they tend to be very socially liberal and not take Christian rules very seriously.

What did I just say about adult games? That kind of playground bullshit doesn’t work with me, Sparky.

So I take it you’re not going to answer my direct question, then?

But yeah, the message in the sign is the child abuse everyone is talking about: introducing psychological fears of everlasting torment over vague aspects of bronze-age superstition. However, I’ll stick to discussing such aspects with people a bit more capable of mature discourse, if it’s all the same to you.

 You make alot of wrong assumptions in this post.  I do not prop up Christianity through threats of eternal torture.  Christianity is a religion based upon love and grace.  It is true that there are two places your soul will go after you die and that if you reject Christ your soul will go to hell. But that does not have to be taught to children or adults as a threat as you have consistently implied it is.  The people in hell are those there by their own choice. As C.S. Lewis wrote, there are only two kind of people those who say “God, they will be done” and those to whom God says “they will be done’.

Eternal destiny is a part of Christianity and for you to pick that “detail” out and say teaching a child this is abuse is really no different then saying teaching Christianity is abuse even if you try to split hairs. But I would agree with you that if this doctrine is taught in a manner to scare or make children fear God then that is wrong and should not be done.

 In reality it is spreading that message.  It says that jesus is the way to avoid the effects of sin.  That is the Christian message.  By the grace of God, we have been reconciled with him through our faith in Christ Jesus and as a result we have eternal life. That is the Christian message.

 Actually it is just the opposite.  Despite our screw ups we are given the gift of eternal life all we have to do is accept it.

You really are just that stupid, aren’t you?

You say it’s the opposite of what I said, so you’re saying that if you screw up, you don’t get tortured for eternity?

 Despite our sins, and really because of them Jesus came and redeemed us. So because of our screw ups we are  saved by grace through faith.  All you have to do is accept the gift you have been freely given.

@f9ab744ac2cf87a6ea19f6dc4f252ac0:disqus   — If you can’t spell “aspersions”, you might not wanna use the word. (Just sayin’)

And I know abuse when I see it. Bible-God’s passive-aggression, manipulation, and demands to “obey me or I won’t love you”? Those are abuse.

Here, read this article, it might help you get the point.
http://atheism.about.com/od/whatisgod/p/AbuserAbusive.htm

 You are correct I used the wrong word, but I see you got my point.

I read the article. I got the point it was trying to make, but it fails.  I saw that it did not quote any Bible verses to support the author’s view of God’s attributes.  He then tries to tag human motivations onto God which fails miserably. For example, he says that human abusers are insecure and then claims that God is insecure.  There is no biblical support for that. There is also no Biblical support for mood swings or that God changes.  In fact those descriptions are the opposite of God’s attributes- the Biblical description is that God does not,  has not and will not change for eternity. The description of God’s love being dependent upon our love for Him or our obedience is also an invalid description so it an invalid comparison.

Overall, the attempted analogy to compare God to an abusive relationship simply fails to properly take into account the attributes of God or His relationship with his creation.