Dawkins Choice: Abuse and Religion

Except when they are abusing you, as apparently 80% of the parents in the world are.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Spidergoat, I have to say that the view taken by Dawkins and his followers is not accurate. And TBH it is shared by what we in the U.S call 'hicks'. I think you have limited experience with religious people, i am not religious personally because i really have problems making commitments so i probably will never go along with the whole thing anyway but on the whole the religious people are more tolerant and usually a better class of people.

There are radicals\bad people in every system and if that is what your looking for you will find it- religion or not, makes no difference. The point is that we are never going to see an end to belief systems and when you have poor kids who really have nothing else to look forward to, no other hope then why take that away from them? And it cannot be done anyway, you have to let people choose their own way.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Seem to be diverging off into home schooling here.

Straight question: is teaching your kids religion abuse or not? Dawkins thinks it is. I think Dawkins is narrowminded and stupid; teaching Dawkins, frankly, strikes me as abusive, at least as represented by the original article.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

What did I say about proof and pudding?

 

Because that's our alternative to atheist ideals held by the statist education system that calls religion abuse (which is absurd).

 

I agree.


But is this kind of religious abuse acceptable:

Kicking and screaming, Shiite children are brought into a bloody rite of mourning

NABATIYEH, Lebanon: The 6-year-old boy screamed and shook his head to avoid the razor blade. But his father held his head firmly and Hajj Khodor, like a doctor giving an injection, parted the boy's black hair and struck his forehead three times with the blade.

 

Judge the individual. Wow, tough concept.

 

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Such hopefullness. It's beautiful.

 

Its a cultural tradition, not a religious one. Not all Shias do it.

 

Weak.

 

Its true. I don't even know why they do it. Its against Islamic teachings to self mutilate. Its a commemoration of a war when they were all starved and killed by Yazid and his soldiers, which strangely enough took place in Karbala, Iraq.

Much of the history itself is distorted and recognised as distorted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Karbala#Distortion_of_the_history

Even an Islamic fatwa on mutilation and self harm did not stop them.

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/01/13/44162.html

 

I meant spiders reference to some weird assed custom was weak in context to the conversation, sorry.

 

It's a religious custom. If they weren't Muslims, they wouldn't do it, but I have other examples. What about circumcision? What about female genital mutilation? There are numerous examples of real physical abuse that comes directly from belief in the supernatural. What about exorcism? A number of (probably mentally ill) children have been killed when superstitious people tried to cast out their demons.

 

Again none of these have anything to do with religion. Male circumcision is recommended for health reasons, FGM is a custom from Egypt and has to do with cultural perceptions of masculinity or feminity. None of them are taught by religion, they are adopted by cultures. And none of them are based on superstition. [I can't speak for the rest except none of those are taught by any religion]. Wiping out religion will not change the tendency of people to adopt self mutilation [see current surgical practices for cosmetic reasons, botox injections, boob transplants, tattoo parlors]. People follow many of these because of cultural reasons even when they are expressly forbidden by the religion [FGM, self mutilation is forbidden in Islam]

Atheists on the other hand have performed genocides in their aim for a perfect society, culling anyone who does not follow their lack of ideology. Which is what this present witch hunt of theists is beginning to build up to.

 

Circumcision is a religious custom.

"Follow their lack of ideology" Uh, OK. How can you follow something that had no ideology? You consistently lie about atheism and fail to acknowlege the role of ideologies like Communism, which was practiced like a religion.

 

Its a recommendation for health reasons probably from Judaism. Its not obligatory but many doctors also recommend it now, unless they are atheists and want to associate it with religion.

U.N. urges adult men to get circumcised
Evidence indicates it can reduce spread of HIV by up to 60 percent

I keep getting distracted by the fact that they published godless literature, killed believers and destroyed religious institutions.

 

All of which do not follow from a personal disbelief in God.

Judaism requires circumcision as a religious practice. I can see no good health reasons for it. As far as AIDS, people should use condoms anyway.

 

Yeah lets ignore the evidence because it interferes with the anti-theism.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

More scientific evidence of rational thinking here:

How wonderful atheistic of him. Separatist humanist indeed.

 

Any point of view could conceivably lead to violence if one is violent. I believe in cleanliness, so it's possible I could develop a hatred of dirty people and go out to murder the homeless. The problem with religion is that the precepts cannot be questioned, one must accept them on faith, so it's not permissible to re-think principles in light of new information, or what's good for society or the individual. Atheism, with it's rejection of accepting things on faith, has an inherent immunity to fundamentalism (Communism isn't so free, because the ends (a classless society) justifies the means).